New media technologies & student learning

How should teachers respond to a modern world, where being fluent in technology is essential to remaining at the forefront of educational leadership and relevance? At Woodstock School several departments have taken this challenge head on.

In Senior School, the Statistics class engaged the community in a series of online surveys designed to provide feedback on ways to improve the Woodstock School experience. Questions such as, 'Should Woodstock School have uniforms' were asked with fascinating results. The data ranged from how much time students take getting ready in the morning, to the amount of money spent on clothes in a semester. 'I would say that the best thing about using technology in the classroom is that it forces the students to learn to think creatively. Having the students do rote learning will not prepare students for jobs anymore, they need to learn to think for themselves'. - Stephen Philip (Head of Mathematics.) A Robotics Learning system workshop for Junior School teachers was held by Thinklabs demonstrating the uses of robots to teach science, math and technology concepts. Junior School also makes great use of SmartBoards®.

A very visible impact is in the journalism class. Students and teachers work together to create content for their newly live 'TigerOnline' newspaper. This project has direct significance for journalism students. According to Mashable.com, newspaper ad revenue has dropped by 44.24% in the last four years - that's nearly half of the industry's revenue. Journalism is not dead, but it's evolving, and Tiger is evolving with it. Journalism professor Andrzej Plonka, shares his experience 'To illustrate the reach and importance of new media, all I have to do is tell you what happened in the fifteen minutes after I posted a link to the new Tiger Online website on my Facebook wall. The first person to "like" my link was a guy I worked with on my university newspaper almost 20 years ago. Our only contact is through Facebook; our only link is our shared interest in journalism. He knows nothing about Woodstock School, but he is now a reader of the student newspaper. The second person to "like" the link was a Woodstock alumna, a girl I taught several years back. She is in her third year at university in the United States, and she can now keep up with Woodstock news. The third person was a recent graduate, a girl who worked on "Tiger" and is now thinking of studying journalism.

'Previously, student journalists toiled away and had a maximum readership of approximately 500. Now, thanks to the website, their work can be read – and critiqued, judged, and hopefully appreciated – by people all over the world, friends, family, alumni, and complete strangers. My hope is that journalism students will be able to post something new every day, so that regular readers have something to keep them coming back. The students and I also hope this readership will engage with the website, participating in polls and leaving comments; this feedback will potentially guide the students' writing and focus.

'Ultimately, the students will still be challenged to produce compelling content. The immediacy, however, will allow them to attend an event and post photos and reactions minutes after the event ends. Gone are the days of the sports page reporting on events that happened almost a month back. Oh, I just saw that the fourth person to "like" my link was a current science teacher'. - Andrzej Plonka

New media technologies allow students to actively engage and direct their learning process. Here at Woodstock School we are excited to see the new heights this takes them to.