Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Geeked Out


Geeking Out – Digital Youth


Messing around and being “Geeked Out” is the new cool. The article read as randomly as I see the teenagers act in my home and around me in every environment I come across them. Teenagers have the…
“ability to engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous, and interest-driven way is a unique feature of today’s media environment.”
They are talking on phones, messaging, uploading another photo on their mail, sent from their latest iphone . (and that could be the adults as well). More and more we live in more than the ‘here and now’ . Technology pervades our lives. Maybe even more so the TCK’s in our environment – out of their own culture they absorb themselves quickly into the tech culture.

Social Networks MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc take up hours of most teenagers lives. How many friends can you accumulate? The word friends is yet another word being redefined by technology. Who hasn’t been told that you have only a few good friends in your life you can count on? That needs redefining in tech terms as we are so connected that someone, somewhere in the world is awake and ready to be our ‘friend’. That makes us popular – right???? And being popular can be everything to a teenager. More motivation to ‘geek it up’.

The ingenuity and thirst to learn exhibited by someone like Zelan aroused in me some envy and admiration for his determination to overcome resource deficit and navigate the tech world. It is motivating in terms of utilizing the people who know in my working environment and the hardware and programs available.

I exist in a world where specialized knowledge networks and communities are my fingertips to impact my own learning, and thus those of the students I work with. A timely reminder indeed



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