Teaching machines and the way we use them
In the modern times children have many ways to stay entertained. Children always didn’t have so many options to stay entertained and only had a few just 30 years ago and even less before that. The technology advances have a lot to do with the expansion of the learning tools kids use today. Not only is TV a major learning tool but video games are starting to become a major learning tool also. Even though children may not be playing outside as much they used to, today the children are learning in different ways which can be better but worse at the same time.
Before the invention of the TV, computer, and game consoles the only ways for children to learn was to play outside with their friends and explore or play games. These games they played taught them how to make decisions and how to react to certain situations that they might come to. Now kids today rarely play outside and rarely get dirty from playing. Many parents don’t want to have their kids get hurt or dirty because they might not want to do a bunch of laundry or have their kid crying from an injury. The kids from the past years didn’t have the same choices that the kids do today. They only had a couple stay in side or go outside and play. Now kids can go outside but they can stay inside too. But now they have so much more to do from watching TV to playing video games or going on the computer. The children are still learning but they are just using different ways to learn the things that are important. The new advances in technology have given more children different ways of learning the same things that were taught in the past.
These new teaching machines are teaching the children in a much different way from years past. These teaching machines actually teach children some important lessons but just in a different interactive way. They could be playing a role playing game and they could have two options either save this town or destroy it. This is an important step in teaching consequences for their actions. Another example is teaching our kids a different language. In past years the kids didn’t learn a new language until possibly later on in their school careers. Now all they have to do is watch Dora the Explorer and they learn some of the basics in Spanish which they can use to learn more languages in the future. Video games are also a key teaching machine in today’s world. There are so many games today that a child can play that they can do whatever comes to mind. If it’s from creating their own world to leading their character through the darkest of dungeons. With the video games the children can learn the dangers of their decisions and the consequences that can be given out without the fear that they will get in trouble or hurt since it is controlled in a world that is totally separate from ours. Computers in the past decade have also become the perfect learning tools for today’s world. The computer along with the internet has opened up many avenues for learning in a short amount of time. The internet has many different websites that are perfect for teaching children. The kids can simple go onto a website and play a game for fun but in reality they are learning key skills that will help them later on in life. If the child only has to go on the computer then they will save money but still get taught lessons. Even though these are good for teaching kids there are a few problems. These games still have issues with gender stereotyping. The women still stay at home and do the things that there role in society has given them. The men are the ones that go on the adventures and save the people.
The children are learning from these teaching machines but aren’t getting the same social experience that the kids from the past were getting. The kids from the past only had a few options and one was to play with other children from the neighborhood. This was good because the kids were learning how to socialize with each other from an early age. Now since the kids rarely go outside to play and spend all of their time learning inside they don’t get nearly as much socialization as the kids did in the past. This isn’t good because they now won’t know how to really get to know someone like the children use to.
Books were once a great teaching machine for many children. Books have always opened up children’s imagination to the joys or the worst moments of life. The kids learned that they could imagine whatever they want and they turned some of these into games. This opened up the advantage of interacting with other kids and getting to know them better. Now kids read books not because they are learning from them but because they are forced to read them for school. This takes out a lot of the fun that you could get for reading that book and all of the things that you could do in your imagination like create new games or just think about the book. Instead of learning fro reading they would rather pop a videogame in and not only have fun but learn also.
With the introduction of movies into the world they became teaching machines pretty fast. Children’s movies have shown many children ways to do things in life. Some of these children movies teach the kids about the gender roles in society. Like the women only stay home and cook or clean and the men hunt or work and bring home the revenue. This isn’t true anymore since many women work and some actually make more money then their husbands. These movies are still classics but what they are trying to teach isn’t the same as it use to be. These movies are also teaching machines for children in other ways. With all of the merchandise that is tied in with the movies the children are being taught to buy all of this merchandise that is related to the movie. This is good and bad because this puts them in the mind set of they can get everything since they don’t have to pay for it. But it is good because the children are being taught that they can buy things that are related to a movie.
These new teaching machines have changed the ways that kids have interacted with each other but also how they interact with other things. Of course things like computers and gaming systems are machines and you cant really interact with them but the way kids do is kind of machine like. They turn on the system then they click on icons or objects and the children probably don’t even think about it. This is bad because they aren’t thinking they are just clicking on things that they know will do what they want. This is where the possible machine like behavior is coming from. The only new teaching machines that don’t give machine like interactions are movies. The movies let kids think about what is happening instead of just showing them. Some movies have cliff hanger type endings that let you make up how it could have ended. The children actually think about the movie character interactions and anticipate what might happen in the movie. The movies make the kids think about what could happen and why it matters in the context of the whole movie.
Teaching machines have changed in the years from mostly books and interacting with other kids through games to computers, movies and video games. With these changes to teaching machines it has changed the way kids have thought on everything from the way they act to the way they think about interacting with other children. It has also changed the ways that kids interact with objects and other people. The way they interact with other people depends on what teaching machine they used the most like the computer or playing video games. With the continuation and advancement of technology the teaching machines will change again and new ones will be created. The older and slower ones will be forgotten and replaced.
