The first thing I should mention is that for my entire life I have only read a newspaper maybe once or twice and that one or two times was for school. That probably says something about our generation or just me.
This time may, in fact, be a bad time for newsrooms but that doesn’t mean it always will. I completely agree with Chris Hedges when he says, “The Internet will not save newspapers.” This period of time is nothing but a turning point for newsrooms from physical papers to online data streams. The internet is not saving newspapers, it is replacing them. Once they have solidified themselves as the place to go for news then the big sponsors will follow.
In his work Bad Days For Newsrooms Chris Hedges says, “A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment…”
First of all just because something is on the internet doesn’t mean it’s false, neither does the fact that something is in a newspaper make it true. Now it is true that that news and entertainment is being mixed together in the giant bowl called the internet, but I believe that sometimes that can make you absorb information better. I have personally learned anything’s from the internet. Some has been almost useless in everyday life or even school for that matter, while some has actually helped me on tests and in the class room.
One last thing I want to mention is that many people over the 17 years of my life have told me that the best job is one you enjoy doing. Why can that not be applied to the internet. That you learn the most when you enjoy doing it. When I enjoy doing something I remember more about it. When trying to learn something in class I have to pay specific attention to what I’m trying to learn and then go home (or to my dorm) and study to lock it in my head. With videogames, which I really enjoy doing, I can hear or see something once and remember it 2 years later. Until now I found it weird that I could remember almost everything about a videogame, almost enough to recreate it, while I couldn’t even remember a short math equation.
As you write at the end, motivation and interest are important parts of learning. I try to give you all enough freedom to pursue some of your own interests. This will become more apparent in the second half of the course.
ReplyDeleteIn regard to games and learning, you're not the only one to notice how great games can be as systems of learning. James Gee is an excellent and prominent scholar in this area. Here's a short interview with him on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGd1URORsoE
wow, i had no idea this was actually a theory and that someone was trying to implement it.
ReplyDelete