Media Attraction

The section in the reading that quickly grabbed and held my attention is titled, “Building Upon Students’ Active Use in the Media.” Within this topic, it addresses the idea that media is invading children and adolescents’ lives from multiple angles. It has become an easy and efficient way for peers to communicate with one another and form new identities; it also provides them with the access to a plethora of things that attract their interest such as music, videos, and articles. “Through this engagement, they acquire a range of digital literacies required for successful participation in the online, networked social world of the mediasphere” (Beach, 2). Lets face it, almost everyone has willingly submerged themselves head-first into this world due to the amenities it has to offer.

After reading this, I can’t help but reflect on my own experience in high school and the licensure program at the U of M, Twin Cities. Throughout the licensure program, our professors and guest speakers constantly informed us that we (the future teachers) MUST find ways to integrate technology and media into our lesson plans and assignments. I kept thinking to myself, “I’m not familiar with the media and technology that adolescents are interested in today. It’s going to be too hard for me to find ways to implement them into the classroom. I enjoyed reading canonical texts and being talked at by my teacher. If I enjoyed it, I can make my students enjoy it.” Come March, after I had been in the program for ten months, I realized that my way of thinking was definitely NOT an option. Media is everywhere, whether we like it or not. But more importantly, adolescents are absolutely addicted to it!

Looking back at my classrooms in high school proves to be a complete 180 from the classrooms today. Often times, my experience was filled with mundane lectures, note taking, group discussions, and presentations. Occasionally I witnessed the film adaptation of a play or novel we were reading in class in order to help us better understand the language, plot, and characters. Rarely was there research or lessons that integrated or focused on websites, television, magazines, or other forms of media. However, now that I think about it, the media did not pervade my world the way it does today. Of course analyzing and interpreting the text in the “archaic” form of ordinary text was appealing to me; I didn’t know anything different! This was what we, as students, needed to do to succeed. During that time, teachers did not worry about finding ways new ways to engage the students with technologies. They were probably wondering what fancy questions they could ask in the next day’s discussion or how they could develop a summative assessment in the form of a presentation.

Now, as I am currently in the process of becoming a teacher and, hopefully in the near future, obtaining my own classroom, I am constantly searching for ways to integrate media into my lessons plans. Reading straight from the textbook and creating group discussion often causes my students to stare blankly at the wall, daydream, and sleep until I tell them to sit up. Unfortunately, the class that I am teaching has an itinerary and I was FORCED to have the students read from the textbook in class. This was even boring for ME! With that, my classroom does not have the necessary equipment for me to integrate media into my lessons. More often than not, I think of an awesome lesson while I am driving to school and do not have the necessary tools to implement it. Knowing that you have the chance to engage your students and realizing you are unable to do it is incredibly unfortunate and disheartening. I completely understand that in this day in age, education needs to be updated in order to flow with the current times. As mentioned previously, adolescents are willingly exposing themselves to various forms of media everywhere they go; even their bedroom! Therefore, schools need to roll with the times and accept the fact that the integration of media within the classroom will not only benefit the students, but the teacher as well; less of one’s energy will then be spent on waking students up and attempting to keep them engaged with the “archaic” tools and methods of teaching.