Coping with Younger Generation Ignoring the News
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Newspapers gone, journalists fired and education changed to cope with the digital age uprising.
The younger generation of the digital age has left the newspapers, and have moved to online
news. Unfortunately the question is still asked does this generation even pay attention to the online material?
The answer is no, they don't. The younger generation doesn't pay attention to news when they don't understand how it directly affects them.
Even with the news right online with quick and easy access, if the information isn't comprehended as having an affect on them, then there is no need to pay attention to the material.
So how do we help the younger generation grasp the fact that news is important? Start by making it important to them specifically when they are younger.
As shown in the video above, George Washington elementary has a third grade class that is being taught the importance ofblogging at a young age.
It can specifically be seen when the students are talking about blogging most of them post comments, and look at others comments.
Explained by some of these students, it helps them choose other books that they may potentially like to read because of others comments.
These students saw that the information 'posted by others' can benefit them and their choices of, in this case, books.
Essentially, these third graders are getting 'news' about books read by others. This could progress throughout their education to bigger news topics in the United States or throughout the World.
Whether it is print or online, as long as techniques like blogging show the younger generation how news affects them, there is a chance to grasp their attention.
5 comments:
I agree that by teaching younger children to embrace blogging, it will help them pay more attention to news events as they get older.
The thing that would make this problematic is that what your teachers say only goes so far. If their parents are not willing to continue with this at home, then the children are going to associate it with "just another homework thing."
For some young kids, their parents may not get a newspaper and/or not watch the news. In my household growing up, my parents got both a newspaper (the local one during the week then the DM Register on weekends), as well as watched the 10 o'clock news. I remember never being interested in either of these though, because at the time it seemed like something that only grown ups cared about.
It is good to see that the students are listening to what their peers say, and hopefully that will help them as they grow to continue paying attention to the world around them.
I completely agree with you.
I also believe though that this is a start. People are so confused as to how to get the younger generation to acknowledge the news.
Starting this process when they are young and with blogging to see how news can travel in smaller terms will hopefully continue throughout.
If schools would continue to teach this throughout students education, maybe there will even be some sort of attention towards the news.
The main point is that if we are trying to obtain the younger generations attention to news, then we should be teaching techniques such as blogging at a young age to begin that understand of how certain things can affect them personally.
This is a very interesting story! It is so true though that if we teach childeren at a young age about news watching and blogging and all this stuff it will be second nature when they are in college. Where as for myself blogging was entirely new and I still do not watch or read the news religously like I should. That video clip was very interesting also!
I guess the major idea that I took away from this blog was a quote from the teacher in the video: "It gives kids that don't necessarily tell anyone else what they feel a voice." This is what blogging is all about. It's a way to express yourself, no matter if you're writing about hard news stories or music.
Of course, blogging is a way to get news out there. This seems to be a good way to start doing this. One thing from my own experience that got me interested in news was my history class in high school. We would have to bring in current events regularly. Being able to talk about the news with my peers made me more interested in what was going on in the world. Maybe if something like this was started at a younger age it would also be a success.
Well, I do think kids should be informed of the news...but kids also need to informed of a lot of other things before they start blogging. Like, grammar, how to form logical thoughts and articulate them...not to mention the do's and don'ts of opinion writing and ethics.
I feel like kids do need to be aware of what's going on in the world, and if they want to be creative about expressing their opinions related to them, ok. But I think we need to realize that not all kinds of blogging is good blogging - people write a lot of shit just to say, 'I can say this because it's protected' (example from Media, Law & Ethics: the kid who tore pages out of a Bible to make a point that he COULD). So before we just let these kids run wild to say/do whatever they want, let's be cautious. We expose kids to so much already, and to be honest, it's not all good.
I'm by no means saying, 'Shield your children from the dangers of the internet and the violence on the news.' No, they will have to face reality eventually. But let's not purposefully thrust kids into required blogging/news attention until they're mentally able to handle it, please. Too many kids could get so emotionally disturbed by what's out there that they could force themselves into a hermit-like state and become psychotic (sorry, that's the psychology-nerd talking).
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