Implications of New Media for K-12 Education

After reading the article, I was most intrigued by the four new forms of expression predicted for 2015:

1) knowledge webs
2) virtual communities
3) synthetic environments
4) sensory immersion

The fact that our society can follow the technology path and predict where it's going is somewhat scary, but relieving. As we study to become teachers we can focus on today and how to incorporate technology in our curriculum, but we can also know what's coming and start to prepare for these new forms of expressions.

The article touches upon teaching our students how to handle such a vast array of information as well. I think this is going to be important for teachers to have a handle on this themselves because we have access to a plethera of information and we have to pick and choose what works for us, our purporses and which resources are truly rich and which are not. How do we teach this to our students? The quote below is from the article and touches upon that these expressions will not just make students smarter with greater knowledge by themselves. They need to make connections.

"However, access to data does not automatically expand students' knowledge, nor will the mere availability of information intrinsically create an internal framework of ideas that learners can apply in real world settings. While presentational approaches transmit material rapidly from source to student, often this content evaporates quickly from learners' minds. To be motivated to master concepts and skills, pre-college students need to see the connection of what they are learning to the rest of their lives and to the mental models they already use. "