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In the following blog entry I am going to try to answer the question why new media should be used in school education and I am going to describe some of its advantages and disadvantages.

First of all, I think that new media play a major role in everyday life nowadays. New media are becoming more important every day and the younger generations grow up with a huge amount of influences from new media. Here is a nice little cartoon that illustrates this point:

Since new media are so important nowadays, they should also be used in school education. Learning materials and subject matters might become more accessible if they are taught in a more modern way. Students live with new media every day, therefore they might prefer teachers who include those media in their syllabus. Besides, I think that some methodological abilities in new media are simply required if you want to be taken serious by your students.

Another important aspect is to be found in many job advertisements. Almost every employer in the “Western World” demands abilities in programmes such as Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Therefore, those sudents who are not familiar with the use of computers have to expand their competences in school. Even the pupils that already have certain knowledge in the use of new media can benefit from such an education if the teacher provides new aspects of computer skills, especially in the field of internet research.

The use of new media can also help to create more interesting lessons. Especially teachers in foreign language education  might use the internet in order to provide authentic material. Videos on youtube, newspaper articles, etc are some of the examples a teacher might use in his lessons to confront the learners with authentic language. Perhaps one might even show his students an English/French/… chatroom and give them the task to get in touch with students from different countries, since communication is the most important aspect of the internet for many students.

Nevertheless, I also have to mention some disadvantages of the use of new media in school. A first problem is the technical aspect: technical problems might occur and even experts are not immune to such problems . Therefore, as a teacher it is always helpful to have an alternative in mind.

Besides, it is important to control your pupils if you work with them in a computer room. When I look back at my school days, I remember that I often used the time in a computer room to surf the web but I rarely did the tasks I was supposed to do. I had some teachers who really tried to include new media in their lessons but they seldom controlled what the students did.

To conclude, I would say that the use of new media in school is inevitabe nowadays. New media can help a teacher to design interesting lessons but a teacher also has to be aware of the difficulties that are combined with it.

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