Teaching with New Media - Short Guidelines for Teachers
During the courses 'New Media in FLE' and 'Presentation Techniques', I collected some general guidelines teachers may stick to, when it comes to the use of New Media in school:
- In our today's nation of digital natives, we would normally assume that every child has a Pc or internet available at home. When int comes to homework assignments which have to be done on a computer, the teacher should absolutely make sure, that every pupil has access to a pc. If this is not the case, it is important that the school offers time to use the school computers for doing homework.
- Technology -New Media- solves every problem today!??.... Alright, but who solves the problems that occur with technology? Technical problems is a phenomenon that you as teacher should be prepared for! Every time you plan to use New Media in class, you should have a backup plan in case that some things are not working as planned before.
- It may be useful to familiarize yourself with some general troubleshooting skills. However, you should not spend to much time in finding the errors and debugging the system, because time is running meanwhile.
- Usually, the teacher is the one who knows what to do. In this case however, be prepared that your students may be far more skilled in handling the New Media than you are. Due to the fact, that most teachers are still Digital Immigrants, the pupils (Digital Natives) are in most cases more experienced. So, let your students assist you.
- In many cases it will take you a lot of preparation time at home to plan a lesson that includes the use of New Media. This time is not for nothing, because it is essential that the teacher has basic background knowledge about the medium or the internet tool he wants to use in class. Furthermore, if you plan to use the same tool with another class, your preparation will take less time, because you are already prepared.
- New Media support should not just be used for its own sake or to entertain your pupils. Whenever you find other material (worksheet, dialogues, plays) which suit your teaching goal better than the New Media, choose them. In some federal states the curriculum gives tips, when it is most likely to use New Media support.
- In today's society it is not enough to only consume. Your students should also be enabled to create own media (video reading diary, podcast...).
- When consuming media, it is not enough to just look at them. It is far more important, to analyze media content and evaluate it. Talk about topics like 'manipulation by the media' or 'the media- a world I want to live in ?'
- It is always helpful to collaborate with other teachers. Get together and talk about an interdisciplinary media curriculum.
- Make your students aware of the danger the internet poses for students. Topics such as cyber bullying, online privacy, copyright and data protection are topics to be discussed not only at home, but also in the classroom
