Educators compete for kid’s minds every day. What does it mean to compete for kid’s minds? Well, kids have many things they can think about throughout the day. Students constantly make choices about the thoughts they prioritize. Just like the old days when we were in school, students can spend the day thinking about basketball practice, cheerleading practice, paper football, the big game this Friday, the new skateboard that just came out, or perhaps even academics.
As mentioned above, there are similarities between the choices we made during the old days and the choices kids make today. However, times have definitely changed. Students have many more things competing for their minds each day. Many of the new things educators compete with in order to capture the minds of children are directly related to today’s technologies.
Kids embrace technology products. They use them. They think about them. They love them. Sometimes, they even obsess over them. If you have ever seen a student walking around with a cell phone, an MP3 music player, a backup MP3 music player, a set of bluetooth wireless headphones, a couple USB flash drives, a laptop computer, and a portable handheld game system then you know what I mean. Some kids these days look like walking talking electronics stores.
It may sound like I am suggesting that this is a bad thing. Perhaps it seems that I am pointing out how distractive these electronic devices are as they keep students from focusing on academics. That is not what I am saying. I am really just pointing out the realities of the times in which we live. Kid’s love of technology can actually be a very good thing if we use it to our advantage as we strive to educate them.
To use kid’s love of technology to our advantage, we must fully embrace technology. We must understand and use current technology products to educate children. It is important to implement current hardware systems and have access to great electronic media content. Embracing, implementing, understanding, and using current technology is one of the most effective methods to capture the minds of children and help them achieve greatness.
Tags: engineering and technology education, technology education