Digital+Nation

Welcome
Use any prompts below, mix and match prompts, or add your own and respond to it. Just click Edit, type your prompt, and Save. --Ms. H

Prompts
1. Do you agree with MIT professor Sherry Turkle that students need to be stimulated in a way now that they didn't have to before (as in ~25 years ago). Why or why not? What are the implications of this statement for classroom teachers and the lessons they design?

2. Should multi-tasking be allowed in classroom settings, or is it the teacher's responsibility to design learning situations in which students are working on one thing at a time?

3. "My children's education might have a different purpose than mine did," says Rachel Dretizin. Is the purpose of education changing?

4. The IBM industrial park in New Jersey is like a ghost town, says Rushkoff. The employees are still working; they're just not at the office. (Many are working from home). Can schools follow this trend, with people (students, teachers) staying at home? Should it? As access to online teaching technologies increases, how do you think the typical school will be using such programs as //BlackBoard//?)

5. Examine the way in which South Korean elementary school students are being taught to use the internet. Will the approach work? Are there any lessons that America can learn from the approach? Rushkoff comments that he's not sure if the "top-down approach" of internet education would work in America. What do you think he means?

6. Can/Do virtual experiences improve your performance in the real world?

7. "You see schools where they say, //Look, kids are different today...we have to play with them. Otherwise, we lose them. We have to meet them on their own terms.// It's complete hogwash. We've got to slow down and stop. And schools are one of the few institutions we have in our society where you can have a sustained conversation about something without being bombarded and distracted by all these machines. We have to protect that." --Todd Oppenheimer, __The Flickering Mind__

Do you agree or disagree with Mr. Oppenheimer? Why or why not?

8. Write your own here and share with classmates... --Do you agree with Mark Bauerlein on The Dumbest Generation an How the digital age stupefies young Americans? Why or Why Not?