Question #1: What effects does technology have on the Urban secondary classroom?
Do a Google search with the words "technology and urban education" and you get 145,000,000 hits. While I am sure not all of the hits have a legitimate connection to the topic, that is a lot of hits! Where do you begin to look into this topic? I began by going to the Edutopia web site at http://www.edutopia.org. This site has many resources, including articles and videos, on a variety of education topics.
The first video which caught my eye was Students Speak Their Minds Through Digital Media, which follows a group of Latino teens from San Fernando High School. These students "deliver powerful messages through video and the Web" in a technology team supervised by one of the school's social studies teachers.
Students Speak Their Minds Through Digital Media
From this example, we can see that not only are students learning 21st century technology skills, they are learning to look at and communicate their personal experiences in a way they have never done. Videos are being made which touch on social issues...not social issues from a faraway place, but social issues from their own neighborhood. This project has guided students to higher-level critical thinking. Even though the technology team at San Fernando High School is no longer functioning, "graduates" of the program have created their own multimedia company (Alas Media) to not only continue using what they learned in high school, but to "foster the program's goals by working with San Fernando students on Saturdays to produce the iCan Film Festival."
This is just one example of the effects technology on the classroom has had on urban teens. A search on Edutopia finds many more.
Sources:
Edutopia Staff. (2002). Multimedia Serves Youths' Desire to Express Themselves: Southern California's San Fernando Education Technology Team focuses on learning by doing and speaks to students' fascination with technology. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/san-fernando-education-technology-multimedia
Students Speak Their Minds Through Digital Media. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/san-fernando-education-technology-team-video
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