New Media and Education

Education has been utilizing technologies since its orgins, and without technology it could not exist. The earliest forms of technology are language, reading and writing, and these are the basis of education. As Martin Ryder stated, the leading technologies have "defined its very nature." This is absolutely true, and with the rapid developement of new media technologies, the education system is feeling a strong impact.

One way that education is feeling new medias impact, as stated in "The Stuff of New Literacy's article, is how old tasks are being pursued in new ways. "Tech savvy" people are leading the way in this evolution. For example, Amazon's Kindle is a software and hardware platform that displays e-books and other types of media. With the introduction of this in the classroom, the task of reading a book or doing research can be done at a students desk on their laptop, iPhone, BlackBerry, etc... The argument of educational tasks being pursued in new ways from the "Stuff" article is also reinforced in Lankshear and Knobel's article.

In that article, they talk about web 2.0 and the introduction of blogging. They discuss the simplification of blogging, and how a mass new generation of bloggers has stormed the internet. Our New Media class is a perfect example of this, and as I am typing this sentence in my blog, I am proving that old tasks are becoming increasingly easy with the introduction of new media technologies.

One problem with new media in the classroom is the possibilty for technological errors. However, the use of other new media technologies can be the solution to these "bugs." In Dr. Vanslyke-Brigg's lecture, she talked about how one of her new media platforms that her class utilized bgan to malfunction. There was no worry though, because she used her cell phone to contact an IT person, and used a peer-to-peer website for more suggestions on how to fix the problem. Between these two sources, it only took her class minutes to troubleshoot.

Another problem that Dr Vanslyke-Briggs discussed was how the internet can have false websites, like the one that described the "Tree Octopus." This problem can be solved by filtering the internet, which is a problem that has been discussed on my blog numerous times, but can be easily avoided with reputable sources. Eventually, I believe it will be easier for students to filter the internet.

To conclude, new media is impacting education in several ways. From troubleshooting to how we retrieve our educations, it is evolving the way educational tasks are pursued everyday. As more and more classes are implementing new media like Kindle and blogging, it is not hard to imagine a classroom with a computer at every desk.