Professional Documents
Culture Documents
New Media in Classroom Instruction
New Media in Classroom Instruction
Literature review
The use of new media in classroom instruction has been often discussed in relation to the
increasing use of technology in modern society. Understanding new media is seen as a necessary
tool to successfully navigate todays data rich and complex media environment (Literat, 2015).
As educators, our role is to prepare students for this data rich and complex environment.
Understanding the uses of new media in classroom instruction is essential to being able to
prepare our students for entry into a world that is becoming increasingly digitized.
While most of the research in the field of new media use in our schools has been about
the positive results of implementation (Rust, 2015), little of it has gone to discovering how to
implement it. The use of new media in schools has shown to be a fantastic way to engage
students in the material, but as the authors of Digital media adoption in schools: Bottom-up,
top-down, complementary or optional? state, the implementation has fallen short of
expectations because Many teachers use ICT only rarely in their teaching, and if they use digital
technologies, the expected change to a more active, explorative and student centered 21st
century learning seldom takes place (Cantieni, Wespi, Petko, Egger, 2014). This is because
despite how much research has been done into how effective new media is in classrooms, very
little research has been done into how to implement new media into classroom. This is where we
hope to add to the conversation about participatory media use. Although it has been shown to be
an effective tactic in the battle to get students to become more engaged in class, few teachers
understand or attempt to understand how to implement it. This is because, as stated by Beavis
(2013), successful use of participatory media in classroom instruction involves the need to
respond to the orientations and expectations of those growing up in this world (p. 39).
Educators need to rise to the challenge by inquiring about effective ways to use participatory
media in their classrooms because the results are not only positive, they also have the potential to
affect real change to the world of education.
The research has shown that participatory media has many benefits for youth. Recent
research demonstrates that videogames enhance literacy, attention, reaction time, and higherlevel thinking (Delwich, 2006). Video games are often discarded as nothing but entertainment,
but research shows that they have benefits to youths who engage in them.
Besides increasing student involvement in class, the use of participatory media has been
shown to give students more opportunities to develop their identities. Rust states that Social
media in school powerfully enables self-representations that diverge from the traditionally
legitimized academic self which is marked by serious participations, formal conventions, and a
distinct lack in the social identity play that marks students peer interactions (2015). Getting
students to present more authentic representations of themselves helps then develop social skills
which fall in line with a more complete education according to Vygotskys theory of social
cultural development. Todays students try out their identities through Web-enabled authorship
in the form of home pages, blogs, and online social network site profiles (Greenhow, Hughes,
Robelia, 2009). By providing students spaces to have this identity exploration while learning,
educators facilitate both the intellectual and academic development of their students. Adapting
to some of the new ways in which students develop their identities allows teachers to provide
safe spaces for students to grow and learn in.
The social benefits of the integration of new media in classroom instruction is a benefit
that is often overlooked, but it might not be as overlooked as its power as an agent of educational
equity. In their article on participatory media and city youths, Garcia and Morrell state that The
practices and dispositions city youth have toward media today reflect a changing relationship
that encourages manipulation, response, critique and remix. Because of this, technology is being
called upon as an antidote to education inequity globally (2013). The same article shows that
the use of phones in classrooms has increased the test scores of low income students. By
providing students with something as common as a phone, test scores were improved. It stands to
reason that including other forms of ICTs in classroom instruction can help narrow the
educational gap between high and low income students. A number of digital tools have been
developed to support student note-taking and annotation in classrooms (Alvarez, Salavati,
Nussbaum, Milrad, 2012). These ICT tools help underprivileged students improve their
education by empowering them with more resources. By allowing students to take education into
their own hands, we can further enhance the academic experience of all students involved.