Global Impacts
Technology is one of the best ways in which we as teachers can foster empathy within our students and provide them with a vast variety of experiences with people and ideas from different cultures. Why is this important for Language Arts teachers? Because experiences in literature, writing, and communication are becoming more and more diversified for students of the future. As the world's population and thus its uniqueness in cultures and diversity grows larger, the span of the world grows smaller, making it much easier for anyone in the world to communicate and connect with anyone else, no matter their location, via the Internet. Students must learn how to assimilate other cultures and experiences into their own Westernized mindset, and learn how to be accepting of differences. This is crucial not only for relationships via the Internet, but for the wellbeing of our globe and global relations in the future.
Research shows that United States students are not very accepting of other cultures and differences in individuals. When Chris Crow, educator and author of the article "Young Adult Literature", was teaching a novel dealing with United States' relationships with our Cold War rivals, many of his eleventh grade students came back with retorts such as "Why don't we just nuke them", "We've got the bombs, we might as well use them", and "They are all just Commies anyway". These students have literally no experience in dealing with those who have different cultural and moral viewpoints and perspectives than themselves, and would vastly benefit from interacting with other cultures and communities via the Internet and social media. Global approaches via technology could be as small scale as researching and studying a particular culture or cultural traditions of a main character in a novel you are studying or as large scale as doing a pen-pal project via the Internet with a classroom from the Middle East. Cynthia Selfe stated in her novel, Technology and Literacy in the Twenty First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, that "[technology] placed in the hands of right-minded Americans working within a fair and democratic system can help us make the world a better place in which to live-a global (and networked village)". By educating our youth in technological literacy in Language Arts classrooms, we are preparing such right-minded Americans to do global bidding and make our future world much more tolerant and peaceful. It is our responsibility as teachers to use this technology to benefit our global society. The video above emphasizes this global importance we, as teachers of the United States, have to keep our students ahead of the curve for the rest of the world. We must use technology to learn to interact with rapidly successful countries such as China and India, and use technology to prepare our students for jobs they will have in the future that do not even exist to this date.
Research shows that United States students are not very accepting of other cultures and differences in individuals. When Chris Crow, educator and author of the article "Young Adult Literature", was teaching a novel dealing with United States' relationships with our Cold War rivals, many of his eleventh grade students came back with retorts such as "Why don't we just nuke them", "We've got the bombs, we might as well use them", and "They are all just Commies anyway". These students have literally no experience in dealing with those who have different cultural and moral viewpoints and perspectives than themselves, and would vastly benefit from interacting with other cultures and communities via the Internet and social media. Global approaches via technology could be as small scale as researching and studying a particular culture or cultural traditions of a main character in a novel you are studying or as large scale as doing a pen-pal project via the Internet with a classroom from the Middle East. Cynthia Selfe stated in her novel, Technology and Literacy in the Twenty First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, that "[technology] placed in the hands of right-minded Americans working within a fair and democratic system can help us make the world a better place in which to live-a global (and networked village)". By educating our youth in technological literacy in Language Arts classrooms, we are preparing such right-minded Americans to do global bidding and make our future world much more tolerant and peaceful. It is our responsibility as teachers to use this technology to benefit our global society. The video above emphasizes this global importance we, as teachers of the United States, have to keep our students ahead of the curve for the rest of the world. We must use technology to learn to interact with rapidly successful countries such as China and India, and use technology to prepare our students for jobs they will have in the future that do not even exist to this date.