As teachers we are dealing with a generation that is totally wired. Students who grew up in a techno-drenched atmosphere that has trained them to absorb and process information in fundamentally different ways than we ever did. This generation of students are armed with cell phones, laptops, and iPods, instead of spiral notebooks and No. 2 pencils.
We compete with social technologies --such as blogs, wikis, mys space, facebook and other media-syndications. This media allows anyone to shift from consuming to being a media creator. This technology gives students a powerful media-authoring tool. As teachers, student centered learning means relinquishing a degree of control, but doing so also makes it possible to help them learn in more effective ways than ever before.
We have six ipods that we are using in our classroom for listening to reading as well as educational podcasts. The children are using the ipods for comprehension, fluency, and interests in science and social studies. We hope to get more ipods for our classroom through donations and grants.
