It's an honor to review books as a blogger! Especially ones that connect across all my life areas... educator, parent, teacher trainer, and children's ministry while using God's Word as a lens for solutions and strategies to help us adults. This book I accepted because it crosses ALL the lines for me. And I loved the last book by this author, Kathy Koch.
Her new book is titled Screens and Teens. And my oldest is 13 now, and it's fun to tease him that he's a teen now, it's a bit of a revelation as a mom, to be the mom of a teenager! Especially when you life ministry and work has been teaching college students, am I really only 5 years from a college kid?
But I also teach a digital teaching and learning course for pre-service teachers, and I've been most amazed that the students arriving in my classroom, see technology as a time-waster, a negative, a social connection, but often enter my course as 'digital natives' and think lecturing or rote memorization are better learning/teaching strategies. Their experiences, even their digital footprints, are lacking in an educational arena. They find technology vital and consuming, but not as a learning tool. Some day I will enter the class, and my students will be true digital natives, and will start with the question, what's new and how can I learn to use my online life as an educator? But for now, they are tech savvy, screens are in BOTH hands, and yet as young adult teens, they aren't sure how to use technology for good. They often laugh, when they recognize, my first helpful tool is to look in the mirror! Technology is only as good or evil as the OPERATOR. It alone is not inherently good or bad, it's just a tool. I've drawn from Challies.com and his book The Next Story, and from Moody Publishers, Unfriend Yourself by Kyle Tennant.
I laugh because the when we teach about digital natives vs. digital immigrants, I fall more easily into the native category in my thinking and approach to digital resources!! But the key is to cross into new and better ideas, together!
So I'm excited to dive into this new book, and see how it helps me connect with the teens AND screens in my life! The book launches next month, but I'll be keeping you posted here!
Her new book is titled Screens and Teens. And my oldest is 13 now, and it's fun to tease him that he's a teen now, it's a bit of a revelation as a mom, to be the mom of a teenager! Especially when you life ministry and work has been teaching college students, am I really only 5 years from a college kid?
But I also teach a digital teaching and learning course for pre-service teachers, and I've been most amazed that the students arriving in my classroom, see technology as a time-waster, a negative, a social connection, but often enter my course as 'digital natives' and think lecturing or rote memorization are better learning/teaching strategies. Their experiences, even their digital footprints, are lacking in an educational arena. They find technology vital and consuming, but not as a learning tool. Some day I will enter the class, and my students will be true digital natives, and will start with the question, what's new and how can I learn to use my online life as an educator? But for now, they are tech savvy, screens are in BOTH hands, and yet as young adult teens, they aren't sure how to use technology for good. They often laugh, when they recognize, my first helpful tool is to look in the mirror! Technology is only as good or evil as the OPERATOR. It alone is not inherently good or bad, it's just a tool. I've drawn from Challies.com and his book The Next Story, and from Moody Publishers, Unfriend Yourself by Kyle Tennant.
I laugh because the when we teach about digital natives vs. digital immigrants, I fall more easily into the native category in my thinking and approach to digital resources!! But the key is to cross into new and better ideas, together!
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| http://vanessamaynard.edublogs.org/digital-natives-vs-digital-immigrants/ |
So I'm excited to dive into this new book, and see how it helps me connect with the teens AND screens in my life! The book launches next month, but I'll be keeping you posted here!
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