Imanii Jones

EDU 210

Winter

23 August 2015

Students in 21st Century

With the emergence of new technological advances and in this day in age, it is permeable

that students would change as well. Being alive before computers were a household commodity

and people used newspapers and the news networks to stay in the know, I have definitely noticed

the difference. Before if one wanted to write a research paper there was footwork involved. One

would go to the library and read up on the topics that they had to discuss. If one needed sources

to cite or current events, one would go through newspaper archives at the library and find actual

articles with no search engine. Nowadays, knowledge is at our fingertips but the excess of

knowledge makes for opportunities for verbiage. If you want to know something, chances are

someone before wanted to know about the subject and you can find it using any search engine or

electronic database. So much knowledge sometimes leads to wordiness. Things changing

because of the growing availability of knowledge, people are changing. The topics people

discuss and the communications style, the difference in clothing and body art, and the attitudes

people convey contribute heavy to social settings.

Communication styles have changed over the last decade. Students are using more short

hand words with the emergence of internet slang and internet culture. It seems as though, when I

observed students downtown at a coffee shop this past week, internet slang came up a lot in

every day conversation. Certain styles of dance that communicate things were included in

conversations as well as well-known phrases from the internet. These were popular dances

and/or that reinforced a funny story, mainly. A lot of the students used popular movie references

in conversations as well as references to popular videos online that circulate via Facebook. It

seems as though students have their own culture when it comes to communication styles,

especially if they are on social media sites. Social media has played a huge role in the way

students communicate with one another.

Clothing and body art is one of those things that has always differentiated individuals

from one another. At the coffee shop, students had used style of dress to assimilate into groups

where they have similar taste in music and interests. I noticed that the students that dressed like

one another grouped together. This is not to say that people that do not dress alike are not

friends, but for the most part the students that were dressed similarly were closer. I think this is

true for any social setting with students, including high school students. This is also true for non-

students or civilians. It is like the saying, “birds of a feather flock together”. Body art has

become so popular among people that it is not uncommon to go into a professional office and see

the professionals there with full sleeves of tattoos. It is not uncommon to see doctors and lawyers

and students alike with a least one tattoo. It has become part of the American culture; a way to

express oneself. I think that these two things go hand-in-hand because a person’s tattoos show

what their interests are and what they are passionate about, much like their style of dress. This

was evident when I observed students in the coffee shop as well.

A person’s attitude shapes their opinion. If one has a stance about a topic it is because

their attitude has shaped their thoughts and moved them in such a way to think that way. One’s

attitude may stem from culture, upbringing, and their peers or environment. Other people may

have a profound impact on our attitudes about things, how we perceive things. Often times with

enough evidence to support an argument our attitude about something can change. I also went to

the beach with some friends who are also students and politics came up as well as religion.

Because I am passionate about my faith, I kept a firm attitude when a person that is agnostic

brought up the topic. My attitude never swayed because it was based on my decision and my

upbringing. When politics came up, I let up on an opinion that I once held because the evidence

that was presented to me made me see things differently. Our attitudes are what makes us

different and what makes the human race go further. If we did not have a difference in attitude,

we would not improve upon ourselves. I think that is why humans are constantly debating and

why students are constantly interjecting their attitudes and stances on things into conversations,

because as humans and students we want to be proved wrong; we want to learn.

After this last week of observing students where I could, I have notice that time has

changed the way people learn but it has not changed the basic tendency in humans to want to

learn. Our communication styles, our style of dress, our body art, and our attitudes are all ways

to differentiate from one another and understand that we can learn from one another. These

differences bring students together in and out of a learning environment.