My Learning Story

        I have played soccer ever since my memory kicked in (punny!), but I could never juggle the ball. (For those of you who don’t know… juggling a soccer ball involves bouncing the ball on the top of your feet, into the air and back, consecutively.) It wasn’t until the summer before my freshmen year of high school that I finally learned how to do this. As much as I would have liked to learn how to juggle on my own time, I had some fire under my tail from my club coach. I also had a lot of “friendly reminders” from my upcoming high school coach and my dad to learn how to “improve my touch.” Lots of “friendly” reminders.
 

        So the summer before my freshmen year, I had to put the responsibility on my own shoulders and learn how to juggle. I had already watched my coach juggle before and after practice, so I knew what it was supposed to look like. His suggestion was to just practice for as often I could—whether it be before practice, after practice, or at home in the yard (or the living room, as long as I didn’t break anything!) My dad also suggested I look on Youtube for some videos of people juggling, so maybe I could learn from watching. 

        Okay. In order to juggle, I first had to find the mental preparedness I needed to battle the Georgia heat in the summer (Mom forbid juggling in the house, so it was a no-go in the air conditioning.)   Got my mental preparedness, grabbed my water bottle, and left my doubt at the door. I was going to juggle more than three times in the air today. 

        Ball is at my feet. I can’t pick it up with my hands, so I had to roll the ball back onto my foot and use my toe to flick it up. Ball is no longer at my feet. Chase ball down the driveway. Roll the ball back onto my foot and use my toe to flick it up. Success! Oh, now it is in the air. Shoot. Hit it with my left foot. Ball goes flying. Bummer. Roll. Flick. Chase. Roll. Flick. Chase. Repeat rolling, flicking, and chasing for a while until I can control the ball from the ground to my feet in the air a small distance in front of me.

        Step two. Now that I can successfully get the ball into the air, I have to master the amount of pressure my foot needs to give the ball in order to keep it straight up in the air and spinning toward me. Roll. Flick. Tap. Tap. Drop. Okay, that was too light of a touch. I’ll give it a little more “oomph” next time. Roll. Flick. WHACK. Ball flies toward car. Freak out because it has hit the windshield. Sprint to assess the damage. No damage. Return to rolling and flicking and tapping. Give up because it is just too hot. Once or twice I would go on Youtube and see what other fellow futbol players did, but I think that only discouraged me seeing how good they were and how not good I was…

        … But then again, maybe it did encourage me. After I hit a wall of desperation, I came out to my driveway other day (or as close to that as I could) for fifteen minutes or more. The beginning was a lot of rolling, flicking, and chasing still. Toward the middle of the summer, I was able to bounce it on my foot for about ten times before I lost control. Personal practice sessions went more like: roll, flick, tap, tap, tap, st r e  t   c   h, tap, tap, and drop. Now it was just an issue of practice. Toward the end of summer, I was able to control the ball from my foot into the air onto my other foot with ease for about twenty taps. Then I lost endurance and had to let it drop.

        When I came to high school tryouts in the spring, my coach was thoroughly impressed that I could juggle FIFTY times! No one else had practiced juggling over the summer and fall seasons so he was easily impressed by my commitment. I felt so proud that I had taught myself how to juggle!

Digital Generation Reflection

           If I had to choose, I would probably put myself into the “digital native” category. I wouldn’t say I’ve “immigrated” into this new age of technology, but I was certainly born into it. I’m barely older than that cacophonic dial-up internet tone, so I have grown up with texting and Facebook and all these fun technological do-dads. I would make the middle argument however, that I have adapted to my environment that just happens to be more technologically advanced than my elders. Our parents grew up in a time where phone calls were the “thing” and they would much rather pick up the phone and call the cable company when something goes wrong where the younger generation would probably look up an e-mail address on the company website. It is not that the older generation is incapable of learning technology; it is just that they learned something else during their early learning years.
 

              I think that teachers of all generations need to keep in mind that they are teaching to a younger generation. It is important to incorporate the most useful technologies of the children’s age so they will be exposed early and learn to navigate it knowledgeably. It is equally important to use the technologies our generation is comfortable with so that we are able to share our knowledge with them. 

              I would argue completely that this “digital native” generation has become highly dependent its technology. Take a moment next time you are walking to class and notice how many people walking around you are listening to music, texting, or otherwise messing with a phone. How many people are walking in crowds like gossiping school girls like we’ve seen in movies like Grease and High School Musical? I’d be willing to bet you find more people plugged in to technology than not. Face to face conversations are now second to a quick text message or a Skype call. A grounding for our parents meant staying in for the weekend or no phone calls for a whole week. Now? Take a kid’s phone away for just one class period and all hell breaks loose. We digital natives thrive in cyberspace.

Jamie McKenzie’s argument is very believable in that Prensky’s evidence is not only incorrect, but invalid. What McKenzie fails to argue is his own point. He counters Prensky’s with little evidence of his own to negate it. His argument is summed up in his statement, “Real fifteen year old humans are quite different from each other.” Really? Gosh, what a broad and bland comment. Where are the statistics about the lives of 80s kids compared to the lives of 90s kids, compared to kids born after the new millennium? What about statistics of Facebook usage? Cell usage for teens compared to data usage? I’d like to see some numbers or some case studies or some sort of believable research before I believe either argument.  

      I think something that would be highly beneficial is asking the students what technology they use at home and what they expect to use in the classroom. It is important to draw parallels in their lives so school isn’t just “textbook” learning and home isn’t just electronic brainwash.

Class of 2025:

• You will never see a phone with more than three buttons
•  Books had paper pages instead of electronic tablets
•  The radio used to have six pre-sets and you would be listening to the same twenty songs if you listened for more than two hours straight
•  You will never have a video game controller that gives you no strategic or directional advantage when moving/learning the controller to the right or the left with your whole body.
•   You will never see a phone with an antennae.

Meaningful Learning

      I think the most important message that this article relays is the concept that we all learn different ways for different reasons. This seems almost blatantly obvious-- duh, we don't learn how to ride a bike the same way that we learn vocabulary words and their definitions. I really enjoyed the parallels made in Figure 1.1, where intentional, active, constructive, authentic, and cooperative learning all create one brilliant star of an educational relationship. In order to fully prepare students for lifelong learning, an educator must incorporate all of these facets into their lessons. Authentic lessons, like mentioned in the article, include learning physics by applying the knowledge of gravity in the classroom to how a baseball travels in the air when thrown. Applying what students have learned in the classroom into their lives outside of the classroom is imperative to creating meaningful connections in a student's life.

      In order to create this meaningful connection, the article mentions a very critical step in the educational process: a teacher must know how to communicate effectively (with or without technology) to his or her students in order for them to learn. It is of no benefit to a student if the teacher knows everything but cannot relay it in a manner that the student understands. A good educator understands his or her audience and references many different avenues (whether that be current technology, cooperative learning, or other methods) in order to reach out to his or her students. Learning in the classroom is not always about intentional learning either; a balance of all five characteristics allows for students to continue to learn life lessons not explicitly stated in a textbook.