We are media learners!

At Hopkins High School, media in the classroom is used very often to enrich and enhance the students’ education in the basic grades 9-12 English classes. There are movies showed after the text to help students understand the difficult pieces of literature, and the teachers use different computer based lessons to improve the lessons.

In today’s world, “going back to the basics” is not an option for schools today. While there are districts, school boards, and parents out there who wish that media was not incorporated as much as it is in modern day classrooms, it is nearly impossible for students to learn as much as they once did in a world that’s technology is growing so quickly. While I am aware of the reasons why people may object to using so much technology and different types of media in the classroom, there needs to be a balance of how much is used and what it is used for. In the language arts, media is an important part of our students’ education, because today there are so many different types of literature. Literature is no longer defined as just novels, plays, and poetry, but it now stretches out to incorporate blogs, wikis, music, and even video games. By including computers in the classrooms, the teacher does run the risk of not keeping his or her students completely on task, but there are ways to make sure they do complete their work. Even something as simple as arranging the room in a U shape so that the instructor has the capability to see every computer screen can detour students from slacking off and looking at Myspace or Facebook.

Students today are media learners. There are so many ways to include the media in the classroom to enhance their learning. Students are exposed to over 6 hours of media a day, and many of those hours include multitasking by using multiple types of media at the same time (i.e., Listening to music while watching TV, or watching TV while on the computer), so as educators, we should take this fact into account that since the majority of our students have this much exposure that these daily occurrences will leak into their school work. To use media to our advantage, an example of something a language arts teach could do is to have their students create their own blog and require that they post on it once a week. Since many people are concerned that with technology writing the students will loose their basic abilities to produce correct grammar, or formulate a decent five-paragraph essay, those could be components that would be graded within their posts.