This chapter discusses motivating students today for the world of work tomorrow. Educators and business leaders are worried about the decline of the work ethic among young people - who are hungry for praise and impatient of promotions. A number of individuals think young people today have a different ethic. Young people growing up in the digital age have become multitasking, constantly connected, instantly gratified and expect the speed of light in things. It was suggested that in order for young students to respect learning and school, we need to ensure that learning and schoolwork is real adult work that requires both analysis and creativity. The teacher should work as a facilitator rather than an information dictator.
In this sense, I believe Wagner has a very strong point. When I reflect on my own friends and what they expect from their jobs, they are completely unrealistic. So many of them expected to be making the salary of someone who has been working for 7 years besides the fact that they are brand new to the business and have a small fraction of the knowledge they need to be at their desired salary level. I don't believe we can generalize and say the generation is all this way, but I myself notice a very large percentage of people want more rewards for less work and effort.
In the workplace young people today connect in new ways. They long for meaningful work and they desire for a different kind of relationship with adults on a more equal level. They crave dignity. They try to play a new game by the old rules. They want learning to be active and self-express. They want to know why they are being asked to learn something. “Schools need to focus more on projects and the inquiry method. They need to engage students with passion" (Wagner p. 192) in order to reach this new generation.
I agree (mostly) with Wagner's view on how kids learn today. Again, I would generalize this for the whole population of youth but I do witness everything he is bring forth. The Net Generation often spends 2-3 hours online every day (agree! I spend at least that), they want instant gratification (agree!), less patient (agree! because they are used to instant answers), more demanding and fast response time (they want the answers and they want them now!). He also sees students as multi-taskers who rarely focus on one task at a time. I am myself am definitely a multi-tasker but I find I can analyze when that is working and when it is not and majority of them time I'm multi-tasking between assignments or I'm reading while I'm working out on the elliptical. I would say the majority of my students are multi-taskers in the sense that they switch between classwork, Instagram, snapchat and trivia crack. This is not positive multi-tasking.
Students learn differently now because the things they have access to are significantly different from 10 years ago, even just 2 years ago. Students prefer to research on the Internet verse looking through books, they discover new information through searching through different media and they are constantly creating (youtube, Facebook, etc.). Students have access to unlimited amounts of information but I am not confident they know how to navigate efficiently and effectively for education purposes. Teaching them technology etiquitte for school would be extremely beneficial for them.
As a teacher and dealing with the Net Generation, I need to broaden context of subjects and lessen memorization, have students analyze or interpret new media and have students do real research and experiments. "The use of the Internet and other digital technology has transformed both what young people learn today and how they learn" (Wagner p. 178).
In this sense, I believe Wagner has a very strong point. When I reflect on my own friends and what they expect from their jobs, they are completely unrealistic. So many of them expected to be making the salary of someone who has been working for 7 years besides the fact that they are brand new to the business and have a small fraction of the knowledge they need to be at their desired salary level. I don't believe we can generalize and say the generation is all this way, but I myself notice a very large percentage of people want more rewards for less work and effort.
In the workplace young people today connect in new ways. They long for meaningful work and they desire for a different kind of relationship with adults on a more equal level. They crave dignity. They try to play a new game by the old rules. They want learning to be active and self-express. They want to know why they are being asked to learn something. “Schools need to focus more on projects and the inquiry method. They need to engage students with passion" (Wagner p. 192) in order to reach this new generation.
I agree (mostly) with Wagner's view on how kids learn today. Again, I would generalize this for the whole population of youth but I do witness everything he is bring forth. The Net Generation often spends 2-3 hours online every day (agree! I spend at least that), they want instant gratification (agree!), less patient (agree! because they are used to instant answers), more demanding and fast response time (they want the answers and they want them now!). He also sees students as multi-taskers who rarely focus on one task at a time. I am myself am definitely a multi-tasker but I find I can analyze when that is working and when it is not and majority of them time I'm multi-tasking between assignments or I'm reading while I'm working out on the elliptical. I would say the majority of my students are multi-taskers in the sense that they switch between classwork, Instagram, snapchat and trivia crack. This is not positive multi-tasking.
Students learn differently now because the things they have access to are significantly different from 10 years ago, even just 2 years ago. Students prefer to research on the Internet verse looking through books, they discover new information through searching through different media and they are constantly creating (youtube, Facebook, etc.). Students have access to unlimited amounts of information but I am not confident they know how to navigate efficiently and effectively for education purposes. Teaching them technology etiquitte for school would be extremely beneficial for them.
As a teacher and dealing with the Net Generation, I need to broaden context of subjects and lessen memorization, have students analyze or interpret new media and have students do real research and experiments. "The use of the Internet and other digital technology has transformed both what young people learn today and how they learn" (Wagner p. 178).