Tips for Childhood Discovery

Reflection #2

How to keep all kids busily engaged at all times

    In Marc Prensky’s article on “What I learned recently in New York City Classrooms- How to keep all kids busily engaged at all times” he had great points on how to keep the children busy and engaged. In this article Marc talks about setting up a workshop at a school that just received a grant in their technology department. The school was able to purchase new technology. Marc was there to introduce it to the staff and students.
    The only part I did not like about this article was that the teachers were suppose to take one or two students to the workshop. I have trouble with the fact that only some students were able to attend. They did come back to the classroom and teach the rest of them. I just found it unfair to the other students. They were not able to all get the same experience.
    I did find great parts in Marc’s paper as well. Through this project Marc always included the students. Each student always had a job to do in the classroom. This helped the teacher with learning the new technology. Such as if the teacher needed to reboot one of the computers she could ask the student with that job and they can complete the task and the teacher does not have to stop what she is doing.
    Another part of this article that I thought was great was the part on how Marc interviewed the students and recorded them. By doing this many of the students were shy so they had to complete the recording again. I believe this helped students learn how to speak out to a different audience and boost their confidence. For the classes that were larger Marc had to the students interview each other which is great experience for all the students.

Second Article

Using Cell Phones for Exams

    In Marc Prensky’s article about “Using Cell Phones for Exams” was short, sweet, and to the point. In this two page article Marc got his point across. Even though we the people of the world have all of this new technology surrounding us and many of the people still live in the past. Instead of setting aside technology we should be embracing more.

Marc makes a great statement about how attitudes need to change. If students do not get to use technology we are only preparing them for the past. The future will be a shock and the future generations will not be prepared. We are preservice teachers need to seriously think about how we can incorporate technology into our classrooms. It is only going to become more common so why not embrace it.