One could say that it is a very difficult question to which extend a teacher should use new media during his or her lessons but to my mind, there is no doubt that a teacher should at least acquaint his pupils with new media techniques. I hold this opinion in a very vehement way because I only had teachers who were a bit "out of fashion". During my time in the "Mittelstufe", the only media they worked with were shappy old school books, in whose the German "Mauer" still existed, and the good old "workbook" even less new media. At the "Oberstufe", we worked with plays by William Shakespeare and poems by Robert Frost but no sign of introducing us, the pupils, to using powerpoint or "e – learning platforms". To be honest, during that time I was not desolated about that because for one thing, I grew up in a very, very small village, were an internet connection via "DSL" was impossible (there simply didn`t exist a wire to connect us to it) and for another thing, it was very convenient for a lazy student (who I had been) to use second hand "Reclams" were the interpretations already were scribbled in.
After my A – levels, my point of view changed rapidly when I saw how bad my skills in using new media were: I could not use powerpoint, I did not know how I could use the internet as a source for preparing presentations or written assignments. This was a very serious problem when I started studying at the university in Marburg!
That`s why I think that it is obligatory to introduce students to new media techniques and to make sure that students are competent in using new media. Especially for a teacher teaching a foreign language such as English, I think that there is no way around introducing children to the websites by the "Guardian" or the "Times", for example. here student can learn to use there English skills in a very authentic environment and additionally, they can inform themselves with brandnew events in the field of politics. This is only one way, to use new media to improve the language skills of your student. There are loads of other possibilities of using new media in school. To be honest, I don`t think that there are real disadvantages, except of two points: At first, not every student has the chance to use a computer or the internet at home, annother point is that it is a very high financial claim for schools to make sure that students have access to new media… a very difficult task for the ministry for education and cultural affairs…
May 5, 2009 at 6:46 am |
Hey “lazy” student
Your blog entry is really funny, I had to smile all the time
especially when reading the one sentence in which you described yourself as a lazy student in your school time. You included your own experiences which is good and interesting 
maybe you could have given more arguments that don’t have to do with your own experience but that is just a little thing. All in all a very funny and good-written blog entry 
May 5, 2009 at 6:47 am |
Dear Christoph,
to be honest, i really had to smile about your notbeingabletogetconnectiontotheinternet-situation while you were a pupil, I myself made the same experience. Only that I was on the other side, there were pupils who lived in the vast countryside of the “Koog” (every 5 km a house or either a farm) who had exactly the same poblem. But unfortunately they could not benefit from the good old reclam-books as you did.
.
During this time – gosh, that sounds like ages ago – the pupils with internet connection were the lazy ones, we just typed in, what we needed and voila. The teachers – old fashioned like yours – did not have the knowledge of how to use this kind of source, neither control whether stuff was just handed in as a result of “copy and paste”.
So, yes, it is inevitable to introduce new media in class, as you already mentioned. And we need to keep up with its rapidness of development in order not become the old fashioned teacher oursleves
Cheers, Marthe from the frontrow
May 5, 2009 at 6:49 am |
…there’s a “to”missing after “order” – sorry!