Case Study on Technology Rough Draft

Introduction: Background information about your young person including geographic location, age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status, academic achievement, access to computers at home and school, parental rules about computer use, school rules about computer use, general description of computer use at home and school.

Jason is an 18 year old white male.  He lives in Burnsville WV with his parents.  He graduated from high school in May 2012.  He drove to high school his senior year.  Jason loves spending time on the computer.  He has a computer in his bedroom.  He is given full access to the computer and allowed to use it whenever he wants to.  He isn’t restricted from the computer on school nights.  His parents expect him to be responsible enough to complete his school work, keep up with his chores, and keep us with his job.  All these things will help him prepare for college in the fall.   He is planning to attend West Virginia University and major in Chemistry.   Jason is my nephew and he lives next door.  At this point I know he is on facebook once in a while and he uses a cell phone.

Hanging Out: How did your young person's use of computers reflect friendship driven practices and facilitate social interaction between their peers? Give concrete examples.

Jason is on his computer on a daily basis.  He is constantly checking his cell phone to see if he has any messages from his friends.  He is on his phone on the internet on facebook and twitter.  He has friends in a variety of states.  He talks to his friends in Lewis County where he just graduated High School.  He is talking with his new roommate that he will have when he moves into his WVU dorm in August.  One of the most important things to Jason would be the time he spends on his cell phone with his girl friend.  He tells me that he is on there with her for hours.  Different amounts of time each day.  He feels that not having a cell phone would impact the relationship that he has with his girl friend. 

Messing Around: How did your young person's use of computers provide them with informal learning opportunities to develop tech savvy skill sets? Give concrete examples.

Jason spends a lot of time on the computer.  He is always going to different sites.  He has learned how to go into these different sites and open forms and manipulate them.  He has found many different ways to get around being blocked from particular sites, even when he is in school.  He mentioned going to Youtube and some other music websites.  He saves a lot of music to use on his ipod and just to burn to cd’s to play in his car.  He likes to watch movies online and says he never has to worry about missing his favorite shows on television because he can just to onto the network site and download the episode that he missed and watch it whenever it is convienent for him. 

Geeking Out: Has your young person developed a particular interest or highly specialized skill sets as a result of their use of computers at home and school? Describe?

Jason mentioned that he does have a few favorite sites that he became fond of when he was beginning his love of chemistry.  He says that he is always finding new sites that help him with formulas and the periodic table.  He informed me that there are a lot of apps that can be downloaded to help with homework too.  Jason is a very bright boy and very eager to pour himself into his major at college.  Most of his life revolves around him preparing for college at this point. 

Digital Media and Schooling

How can teachers build on your young person's skills and interests that pertain to digital media at school? Why should teachers build on young peoples' Make connections to recommendations put forward by the National Council of Teachers for English (NCTE) in these policy briefs.

I think it would help if teachers allowed their students to demonstrate to the class, some of the new sites that they have found as well as how to use and manipulate those sites.  Students learn a lot from one another and are encouraged by their peers.  Teachers can learn a lot while their students are learning.