Chapter. 2

This week is my group member’s week to present our book chapter. We got lucky and chose to do the first presentation on chapter 2. The title of this chapter was “The Changing World” and I believe that was a great name for this chapter. I believe this because the 5 main arguments talked about change in thinking, in how we communicate, in Interaction, in the Multimedia, and in Publication.
The chapter started out by talking about how schools now a day are stuck in the 19th century. They rely on pen and paper to help our students prepare for the future and deal little with computers. Throughout the chapter they talk about how computers are not at the core. They then go on to talk about the change that in occurring in our world right before our eyes.
The chapter talked about how there is change in thinking. What they meant about this is that people need skills to find the information they are looking for. They need to change their thinking to accepting technology and starting to learn about it for a successful future. This is something I believe in very strongly the future is technology and we need to keep up with it. The book also talked about the change in how we communicate. They say to prepare students to communicate in this emerging world requires not simply the traditional reading and writing, but learning how to communicate using different media with people who do not share the same assumptions. Again the book has a valid point in my opinion. In today’s society we are not just communicating with people in America, or people who speak English. We need to be able to implement technology in our lives so it can help us communicate with not only people around the world, but with people who don’t even speak our language! The book chapter touched briefly on interaction. With this they meant not only video games, but cool educational tools such as Math Blaster, and Typing tutors. These fun games can entice children to learn content that they might consider “boring”. I believe that this will help students enjoy schooling more and it will help them keep up with the emerging technology. The second to last point I took away from this chapter was Multi-Media. Multi-Media (they say) brings together print, video, and audio, into Multimedia presentations and it provides new opportunity for communicating information. Growing up in a private catholic school I had never heard of a smart board, or a prezi presentation. All these tools help students learn and provide new ways to teach. The final point that the chapter touched on was publication. They talked about cool things such as the youth radio. When students can use technology to show the world what they can do with just a simple computer and the internet, they are improving their communication skills, and also exposing themselves to future opportunities and people that can help them on their future path.
I really liked this chapter. I believe is does an excellent job of showing examples of why technology is really a good thing. As a result of this new thinking I realize that technology is here to stay and it is our job to” jump on the wagon” and find ways to implement technology in our classrooms. There are so many awesome tools and resources out there, why not use them?