“With digital tools, students can access text, images, and videos in a matter of clicks.”-Monica Burns, Tasks Before Apps (2018)
Let’s face it: Our students live in a virtual world, most of the time, where they have an insurmountable access to a constant, never-ending stream of digital content. Anything that they could possibly ever want is at the disposal of their fingertips. Our students, now, are constantly engaged in something, whether that something is a post on Instagram, a YouTube video, or Netflix. Indeed, Burns (2018) goes on to state: “Students are now consuming and interacting with content throughout the school day, with or without guidance of peers, parents, and educators” (p. 22). Probably, if left to their own devices, our students could be well on their way to becoming digital citizens—maybe not good ones, but digital citizens nonetheless.
This constant barrage of content that our students experience leaves us with the following framework that Burns (2018) proposes to creatively engage our students: “The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (2015) outlines a framework for learning that includes creating and innovation. It suggests three main categories or steps of creative work: Think creatively, work creatively with others, and implement innovations” (p. 23). I think that it’s quite important that we start to creatively engage with our students. They are most likely to be more visual and creative learners than those students that came before them in previous generations.
I think in order to effectively and impactfully reach our students, we need to meet them on their level of creativity. This could be through implementing project based learning, videos, and a multi-media approach to curriculum design. The more creative we are with our lessons and projects, the more the students will be able to interact and engage with the curriculum, at least in my opinion. I feel like, as educators, we need to start embracing the fact that technology is here to stay, so instead of punishing and admonishing our students’ uses of tech, we need to embrace the fact that they are Generation Z, and this is what they grew up with. Burns (2018) further states, “With or without digital tools, creation in the classroom provides opportunities to explore a topic creatively or independently” (p. 30). Our students are more inclined to want to learn independently, most likely because they have so much access to information, and we need to provide them with the creativity, or rather creative opportunities, to further grow their want to learn.
I agree that we should encourage the use of technology. Technology was invented to benefit us and make things easier. I myself would sometimes want to search things up myself to give myself the answer to my own questions and curiosity. Technology in the 21st century has been so advanced compared to back then and an answer is only a few clicks away. Allowing students to do things such as research or learn about a topic by themselves provides them an opportunity to learn.
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