kids these days...

So in New Media Writing Monday, we were discussing how teaching styles have had to change for the new, younger generation. The generation before mine learns strictly from text. My generation learns mostly from text, but the age of learning visually slowly started to form during our school days. The generation in school now learns from mainly visual techniques.

While I was in elementary school, the interenet and video games were still in the process of being perfected. Technology has advanced so much at this point that visual teaching methods are the only way to keep the generation now in school focused. This brings to question whether this generation is lazy or are previous generations too stubbourn? Are we so blinded by our "Kids these days..." comments that we fail to see the added benefits of visual learning?

Dr. Mauriello brought up several good points about this. This generation has better hand/eye coordination and pick up on visual things faster. When I go to a web page and hear sound coming from it, I turn the volume down because I don't want to hear what the ads are saying. I want to read what's on the web page. The new generation isn't bothered by this "noise." Are they picking up something I'm missing by listening to the "noise" or are they just better at blocking out the "noise?"

I can agree that there are several pros to visual learning, but I can also see the pros to text learning. I think that teachers should strive to mix their teaching techniques with both ways. I think that teaching with strictly visual ways doesn't always challenge the student. The visual way is simply a quick-fix. For example, reading a book is completely different from hearing it read or seeing it in movie form. There is no way to get the same amount of information in reading a book that you would hearing or seeing it. If you don't pay enough attention while listening to a book, you can easily drift off in your thoughts and miss something; and movies never tell the whole story the way the book does.

With the world becoming more and more technologically savvy, it's good for people to know how to work with technology; but you still have to read the manual to know how to use it.