Discovery - Growing Up Online - Chapter 2: A revolution in Classrooms & Social Life (PBS Frontline)

From Growing UP ONLINE
(PBS Frontline)

In Growing Up Online, FRONTLINE takes viewers inside the very public private worlds that kids are creating online, raising important questions about how the Internet is transforming childhood.


"The Internet and the digital world was something that belonged to adults, and now it's something that really is the province of teenagers, " says C.J. Pascoe, a postdoctoral scholar with the University of California, Berkeley's Digital Youth Research project.

"They're able to have a private space, even while they're still at home. They're able to communicate with their friends and have an entire social life outside of the purview of their parents, without actually having to leave the house."

As more and more kids grow up online, parents are finding themselves on the outside looking in. "I remember being 11; I remember being 13; I remember being 16, and I remember having secrets," mother of four Evan Skinner says. "But it's really hard when it's the other side."

At school, teachers are trying to figure out how to reach a generation that no longer reads books or newspapers. "We can't possibly expect the learner of today to be engrossed by someone who speaks in a monotone voice with a piece of chalk in their hand," one school principal says.

"We almost have to be entertainers," social studies teacher Steve Maher tells FRONTLINE. "They consume so much media. We have to cut through that cloud of information around them, cut through that media, and capture their attention."

Growing up Online
PBS (USA) Jan 2008
7 chapters

1. Living their lives essentially online
2. A revolution in classrooms and social life 9:04 min
3. Self expression, trying on new identities
4. The child predator fear
5. Private worlds outside parents' reach?
6. Cyberbulling
7. Update

Chapter 2 - outline
"the need for teachers to be entertainers"

Highlights

• How our relationship to information is changing
• How technology helps him teach
• Are kids losing something in this media rich environment?
• How he captures his students' attention
• The cheating issue
• What the student of the future will need to succeed