Ch. 4 of "Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Or Your first Year of Teaching"

Students these days have been raised with laptops, cell phones, ipads and high-speed internet. It wasn't that long ago (I am 24) where cell phones were HUGE and a laptop was something you would see occasionally in a Tom Hanks movie. But now, if you don't have one or all of those devices, you are considered an outcast or at least not technologically savvy. Though I am not that much older than the incoming generation, my future students are learning way faster and are WAY more advanced than I am, even currently. Seriously though, I sometimes have to call my Freshmen brother and ask him for the best websites to find music, hot topics and how to upload a picture from my ipod to my computer. I, as a teacher, need to change how I teach, because how my students learn has changed. The classes I remember the most are the ones where I was able to make collages and talk with friends about what they got out of the lecture (whether we liked it or not mostly, but what we thought was interesting). I devoured the time where we could discuss, in a safe environment, current events and political views. Nowadays, we can easily find both sides of a controversy with a simple click of a button on our computers or text CHACHA. I need to implement their passions that is why we need to make blogging, Facebooking and playing video games a part of everyday education, to keep students engaged and interested. And honestly so they can keep us up to par on the new technology, the newest high school cliques (A hipster is a clique now, what is a hipster? Really?) and who is dating who. The times have changed, so teachers must as well!