Today's Students

I must say that I really enjoyed the reading for this unit. During the readings, I was comparing my students to the characteristics of the generation presented by the three articles. I was also trying to figure out what generation I belonged to because I felt I had characteristics from both of the generations. From the Reeves and Oh article, I realized that I was a cusper since I feel I belong both to Generation X and Millennial generation. As for my students go, I felt Prensky’s article described my students the best. I thought the article did a good job of describing the two generations as Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Again, I feel that I have characteristics of both, Digital Native and Immigrant. When I used to teach writing, I used to have my students create a rough draft on paper and then a final copy. I would get frustrated as a teacher because they hated this procedure and struggled with it. I noticed that my sister, a Digital Native, wrote papers directly from the computer, since it was quicker and easier for her. I tried that on my students and found that typing on the computer came more natural to them than writing on paper, which in turn produced better writing samples. I also agree from Prensky’s article, that today’s students have changed and are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. The students do think differently, which means that we should not rely on the traditional lecture method. I do feel that my students are used to getting information fast and prefer graphics before their text. Also, they work better when I play music in the background.

The Reeves and Oh article did a nice job of analyzing the research and articles out there for the Millennial generation. I felt the Howe and Strauss article presented a very optimistic view on today’s students. I disagreed with most of what Howe and Strauss mentioned in their article because I couldn’t relate my students to the characteristics that were presented. I feel GenMe is the most appropriate name for this generation because I feel my students are very self absorbed. I compared my students and cousins that belong to this generation with the characteristics presented by Howes and Strauss and found that the characteristics did not match. They put themselves first before their parents. I feel they put less effort into anything they are doing when it comes to work and school. They always want the easy way out. They do not respect their elders, especially the authority. I feel they use their parents to bail them out of trouble. I see this happen all the time in our school. Parents are fighting with the administration because they don’t believe in the punishment given to their child. I don’t think the kids are optimistic, positive, and confident. I have several students who cut themselves because they are unhappy and want to punish themselves with pain. However, I do agree with Howe and Strauss that this generation has everything they need when it comes to things. I feel these kids have much more than the kids in my generation had. I do not agree with Howe and Strauss that the kids in this generation are the most watched. We have Challenge Day in our school and it’s a day when the kids open up and talk about their feelings. From Challenge Day, I noticed that a lot of parents for my students are working long hours with kids being home alone for a large part of the day.

Overall, I found the reading to be very interesting. I felt Prensky did a nice job of describing my students, whereas I could not relate my students to the characteristics presented by Howe and Strauss. I agree with Reeves and Oh that better research needs to be conducted on generations.

First Impressions of Web 2.0

Hello, my name is Sohnia Malik. I am a seventh grade science and math teacher at Grissom Middle School. Grissom Middle School is located in Sterling Heights, Michigan and is a school of Warren Consolidated Schools. I am starting my 3rd year of teaching and am fortunate to be teaching the same subjects in the same school, since there was a lot of movement in the district. I teach 4 sections of science and 1 section of math. Grissom is a pretty big school with more than 600 students. The student population is diverse in terms of socio-economic and race. Grissom is a Title I school, which means that we have several students of low socio-economic status. We get title I funds from the federal government to fund some of our activities such as after school tutoring. We have a big Middle Eastern population in our schools. As you may have heard on the news, WCS will receive hundreds of Iraqi refugees, which will definitely boost our enrollment. The biggest challenge that Grissom faces is lack of parental involvement, because of the culture differences and parents who do not speak english. I only had 29 parents show up for open house this past week! We are looking at ways to improve communication between parents and the school. I love working in a middle school, because I feel like I can relate to the kids.

I love using technology in my classroom, because I believe it is a great motivator. I just got a LCD projector which my students and I are loving it! I have not used blogs in my classroom. I believe blogs would benefit my classroom, especially in my science classroom. However, the only reason I don't use blogs is because several of my students do not have a computer or internet access at home. I cannot require computers or Internet access, because several of students cannot afford it. It is difficult to do it at school because we only have 2 computer labs and 1 set of laptops, which are always busy. I would love to use blogs, but I feel lack of availability prevents me to try it in my classroom.