An educator's job is to equip students for the future, and as our future moves increasingly digital (especially with COVID-19) we must prepare students to engage with the world through technology in the most positive and effective way possible.
If there's one thing COVID-19 has done to our world, is it has created a universal necessity for the shift to a digital environment, not only for daily communication but for almost every field of the working world.
"The internet and digital technology have not only changed our day-to-day lives—they have changed the boundaries of education." - Cory Collins, Kate Shuster
Before one can begin to teach students about technology and its many uses, we must educate them on the vast ways they can be manipulated in the technological space. By equipping students with the skills to use the internet in the most critical ways, they can then become a valuable, yet safe, member of digital citizenship. With an endless variety of proactive missions, from mental health to bias in the media, students should be informed on the infinite positive but additionally negative ways of the internet. A tool that is both an aid to the good and bad around the world, the internet must be encouraged as a positive tool to promote positivity and block the negative.
Alike a majority of my teaching, it will be my mission to provide students with the skills to problem-solve rather than "spoon-feed" them the answers. A teacher/adult can not always be around to supervise a student on the internet, and therefore we must show students how to be digitally responsible in their own lives and outside of the classroom. This will additionally help create proactive and logical thinkers. This is important for many areas of the internet as while some platforms have moderators, like Youtube, others do not and it is up to the student to make informed and socially aware decisions.
"Without guidance they remain amateur users of informations and communication technology (ICT), which raises concerns about a generation of youth who are not fully digitally literate, yet are deeply immersed in cyberspace." - Media Smarts
In regard to my technological knowledge, growing up in a family of teachers, I have additionally been exposed to ever-changing teaching technologies and have observed the modernization of teaching practices alongside. If there is one thing I have learned about modern technology, it is that a majority of products and systems made, follow a similar structure that can be easily navigated if basic skills are understood. Understanding technology is less about memorizing and mastering every type of technology, but rather knowing how to navigate and use their problem-solving abilities with ease. By incorporating technology in a wide range of lesson planning and in various activities, I can guide students to use tech positively in the classroom, but as well for recreation and as a member of society.With this, I will make it my mission to educate students on the basics of digital citizenship and safe practices in order for them to make their own informed decisions.
"The need for digital literacy extends into multiple areas of life, including life away from the keyboard." - Cory Collins, Kate Schuster
While it may feel as though our digital presence remains within the screen, it is ultimately a reality that students lives are prominently impacted by their technology/internet use. New generations are seeing this as an effect on mental health, both good and bad. As an educator, I will do my best to steer those effects into a positive space.
While I haven't been in a single classroom long enough to see these effects on individual students. I know for a fact my own experiences with the internet and with those around me are of a big impact. For myself, someone who has been raised alongside modern technology, I have learned to decipher what is healthy and unhealthy and think proactively about what is valuable information. Unfortunately, this took time and it, at times, did take a toll on my mental health (ie. spending too much time on social media and reading negative information/news). For someone like my mother, who has just been introduced to modern technology and social media, she can find herself overwhelmed with information that she is unable to categorize or avoid altogether. If she had been given the training or guidance ahead of time, she would be able to navigate, use, and enjoy the internet much simpler and stress-free.
Overall, I can conclude that my mission as an educator of digital and media literacies will be to prepare and equip students with the skills to combat the complexities of the digital and social media world on their own because "I can not teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." (Socrates)
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