Babysitting Vs. Teaching

The thing that hit me the most when I was reading the read was that, as teachers, we have a responsibility to make sure that the media we use in our classrooms is useful. At first, I was astonished when I read that “sometimes, digital technology is used as a babysitter” (5). However, when I stopped to think about it, I realized that in both classes I was in growing up and classes that I have observed since becoming a teaching major, teachers have, at times, used media to babysit. There was no assignment or discussion after watching the movie, the merely moved on to something else the next day. One of the reasons why I think this is so bad is because when teachers do this, they teach kids to use media lazily. “Media is something purely created for you to sit and consume,” is the message that is sent. This is so not true! As teachers, it is out responsibility to make sure that our students are responsible, critical consumers of media that use what they consume to go out and create. Another problem with the babysitting approach to using media is that it wastes time. Many teachers often complain about not having enough time to teach everything, and I agree that there isn’t a lot of time. That is why we must use what time we do have as teachers effectively, which is never accomplished by popping in a DVD.

As I have thought about how I can use media but avoid using it to babysit, one of the best ideas I had was to use media as journal prompts. Every day I could show the students a piece of media—youtube video, song, news report, movie clip—and then, after showing it, have them respond to it. When having them respond to it, I think it would also be a good idea for me to come up with several specific questions for them to respond to, rather than just letting them go at it. I think that having these daily journal prompts will help them in several ways. For one, it will expose them to a wide variety of media. Being able to compare and contrast these different types of media will, I believe, help them to be more critical of the messages the everyday media they experience are sending because they’ve seen different techniques used in many different forms. I also think that this can help students if I show media that correlates to what we are currently studying. This will help the students learn how to draw parallels and connections to the curriculum and make it more relevant.

I also came up with several guidelines/rules that I’m going to try to use for myself when I pick media to use in the classroom. They are:

1.      For every piece of media I use, provide a way for students to respond to what they experience. Never just show and move on. Have the students write something down, talk to their neighbor, turn in a report—never let the media stand in isolation.

2.      Make the media I pick meaningful. Don’t just show the whole movie—pick a certain part that brings out a point or theme that you are trying to communicate. 

3.      Never let the consuming of media constitute an entire class period.

4.      Make the media relevant to the students’ lives. Mr. Fisher did a fantastic job at this when he combined popular MTV shows with discussion of The Crucible. It helped students to get engaged.

Hopefully, these personal rules will help me to avoid using media to babysit, and will enable me to help my students become responsible users, not just consumers, of media.