Talk about the book after you read it. That is hard for me since I am a slow reader and have to reread several times in order to understand with I have read. Time to look at the book Convergence Culture, Where Old and New Media Collide. What was my initial thoughts even before I read the book well I thought it was going to discuss the things we need to do and the things that we need to leave behind.
I must say that I am really enjoying this book and think that the author has put the his knowledge of the material to the forefront. Now, before we dive into the meaning of the book there is just one side note. That was not an introduction but instead it was a whole new chapter. Introductions have never lasted that long but what do I really know since I read Science books.
What exactly is the author, Henry Jenkins, trying to say? Well, it is something that I have talked to many teachers about that are older than me and younger. These kids have not witnessed the change in media like some of us have. In the introduction it talks about the first colored television. I was not around for that but you can see the change that is happening with our TVs. They are going from a box set to now being flat screen. I have seen the walkman go to the cd player and now how can we forget there are iPods and mp3s. Cellphones have went from a bag to now being smaller than a deck of cards and have different type of media that you can put on it.
There is no drastic change in teachers as they may interact with their students but they still teach old school. This use to be me and I would just make sure that the students got the knowledge instead of them understand the material. I notice that this is why there are so many conflicts with teacher and students in the classroom. Schools need to integrate the newly social networking like text and post to social network (blogs). Where kids use to have friends that lived down the street that they would interact with now, they have friends all over the world to network with.
I know that in my classroom, I have the students sit in their desk and really don't allow them to interact with each other. With all this that happened the traditional way of teaching often has the kids bored out of their minds. They are not being engaged. I have notice that in my class the students need to interact and engage with each other. Students like to participate and can 't learn with the traditional style of teaching. According to Jenkins, he says that we should "work on a collective intelligence" with "strengths and weakness is disorderly, undisciplined, and unruly" (Jenkins, 2006). We as teachers have to realize that this is part of the world that our students are in. They relate to the technological media and cannot relate to anything else that we put in their faces. We must fit in to their world and not force them to fit in ours.
Jenkins, goes on the say that this very thing makes the collective intelligence work. He says that it is "not the possession of knowledge", which we as teachers believe that students should have, but the "social process of acquiring it" (Jenkins, 2006). So, why is it so hard for us as educators to see this? It is because many of us are scared of the new technology and rely on the knowledge that we were taught. In order to reach the students in the classroom, they need to change a little of their own state of mind. It is time to use the things in the classroom to help the students learn. I think that once this happens then each classroom will be better. It just takes a few to show teachers that technology is not a scary thing but it is beneficial to aid in learning. Many lesson plans can be easier with the help of technology and the students will have an social process of acquiring this knowledge. We must expand our minds to be like these new consumers and get out of the dark ages.
Resource:
Jenkins, H (2006). Convergence culture:Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press
Photo taken by me of my classroom that now needs to have technology media and out of the old school teaching
