EduTechie.com

Today there was an article in the Daily Tar Heel “Report: Average student studies 4 hours weekly.” As I read the article several things caught my attention.

At first thought I figured we are not challenging students enough. A very perceptive sophomore, Mac Stewart, was asked about why he thought students didn’t study very much he said “The amount students study is based on students’ own personal motivation rather than how much professors might challenge them.” To a certain extent I agree with him, the motivation of a student will have more of an impact on what students do for a class than the teacher’s assignments he gives to them. On the other hand, why can’t professors motivate students? Is there some sort of unwritten rule that once a student enters college the professor is no longer responsible for the motivation of students? Can they then just give assignments and assume the students will somehow find the motivation to do them. Well, as I write, I realize the answer to that question is probably ‘Yes,’ they can do that. But the great one’s don’t. … The great teachers motivate their students with assignments that excite them and help them to learn the topic at the same time. That leads me to the point of this article.

If we look at the students attending Universities today we see that they are very technologically savvy. They have no problem navigating the internet and more importantly, contributing to the content on the internet. Many of them live entire digital lives online on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. You can take a look at Fred Stutzman’s research, a up and coming scholar here on campus, and see just how prevalent these social networks are among college students.

I suggest that teachers could make assignments that require students to publish their work on the internet. Students would think much more critically before writing anything that was going to go into the digital sphere for the whole world to see. One of the wonderful things about the internet today is its ability to solicit conversation. As students wrote and received comments from people all over the world it could encourage them to improve and write more. There is much more discuss with this idea, but I am going to leave it there for now in hopes of soliciting some comments from some others out there reading this.

The uses of technology do not have to be limited to writing in blogs either. The students in classrooms today, for the most part, are technology driven. If your students use iPods more than blogs, have them create a podcasts of their work. The possibilities are endless. What kind of other ideas do you have for using technology to motivate students?