Hello folks…… this week’s inspiration comes from a VERY little known band called Deltron 3030…
Leveraging technology in the classroom. This is this week’s blog topic. I was waiting for this one. This is probably going to be my favorite topic all year, because let me announce loud and proud, I LOVE TECHNOLOGY!!!! I am a sucker for the newest gadget, the coolest looking stuff and the things that I couldn’t have even imagined when I was a kid. My iPhone, I love it. My Playstation, I love it! Don’t even get me started on my iPad, and the fact that I have my ENTIRE CD collection stored on one hard drive……geez, you can’t get any cooler than that.
I think what helps me out in the classroom is that I am a child of two worlds. I am young enough to still jump on board with the new tech, and not have to call a student or one of my own children to show me how to use it (I can’t tell you how many times I had to set the flashing 12:00 on my mom’s VCR). I Facebook, Tweet, play games on my iPhone, and compose with my computer. I have embraced technology on the very definition of what it is……anything that makes your life easier.
However, I am also old enough to remember not having this stuff. A calculator in school was a big freaking deal!!! Playing “Oregon Trail” ( I know a BUNCH OF YOU played that on your school’s Apple IIE) was the technological highlight of my middle school days, and being a child of the CD and Computer boom puts me at an advantage of knowing both sides of the fence, and how technology both helps and hurts a student in today’s society.
In my personal experience, the biggest challenge in my career so far with leveraging technology is getting the kids to understand that technology is supposed to “make your life easier”, not run it for you. Students are so used to instant gratification with EVERYTHING now, that working towards a goal the “old fashioned way” and not having to depend on technology, or their version of it, is a struggle, especially at a school that is WAY behind the curve when it comes to offering students wireless internet access, computers that are up to date, and restrictions about what can and can’t be used in the classroom. We still don’t let our kids pull out their cell phone in class!!!! Do you believe that??? How are you supposed to teach a kid how to use a resource when they are told they can’t use it!!!! That’s like giving a kid a new Mustang and saying, “now you know you can’t drive it right?”
But I digress….I was born into an emerging world of technology, and still think that music needs to be printed on paper, kids need to be able to do math with out a calculator, and that some things just need to remain PRIVATE (I’m looking at you Facebook and Twitter). I carry a flash drive, but still back up all my grades in an old fashioned Gradebook, because you never know. I love my Keurig, but I still know how to brew coffee on a stovetop. Live music is so much better than and MP3, and a computer doesn’t need to think for me. But that doesn’t mean we don’t use all of the above resources to teach! Advancing tech is not going away, in fact, it gets a little scarier everyday. It is up to us to leverage the use in our classroom. I have always found that a mix of new and old is always the best way to go. What happens when the internet goes out?? (and it does everyday at my school). What happens when the batteries go dead,and what happens when there is no cell reception? To the kids, this is panic time!!! But to us, it’s Plan B. We as teachers need to have a plan B, so we can teach the students to have a Plan B. Plan B is what keeps us going in the “not so advantaged” school classrooms, and Plan B is what will save a lot of our students when technology fails, as it always does at some point.
Remember, technology is supposed to help, not hinder. So in the words of Deltron 3030, “devise a virus” and “revert back to papyrus!” Teach both the old and the new. Cause most of us in the “Dual Age” as I like to call it, turned out just fine. Can you say the same about your students 10 years from now?
Revert back to papyrus. I love it. I told my students that we would we go back to carving on stone tablets if they didn’t do better. Students now have so much tech that they don’t really have an appreciation for it. So every now and then I remove it, and ease back into a full tech environment so they can understand and appreciate it more.
When I talk about computers only having two colors on the screen, or no graphics just text, I feel like the grandmother who talks about walking to school for ten miles with no shoes on. I too am a “dual ager” and find myself wanting to give students a taste of how it used to be without all of these works.
And I think the cell phone issue will change as the BYOD movement is heading full speed into the classrooms.
Embracing technology and encouraging student to think purposefully and innovatively is what will make a huge difference in the classroom.
Hey Michael,
I love your emphasis on technology being “anything that makes your life easier”. We are always looking for a faster, easier route… most direct path to the car in a parking lot, acronyms for complicated terms, shortest line at the grocery store, etc.
I think that we continue to adjust to changing environmental conditions… my parents knew the arrival of the tv but I don’t know a world without one. Their parents remember the first family car. Neither my parents or I can imagine life without a family car.
I marvel that (pre-internet) I moved to countries I had little knowledge of because of the absence of the internet, wikipedia and other current resources. Already, I can’t imagine a world without google or smartphones.
You bring up so many wonderful points here. The power goes out for a few seconds and I go into a state of utter panic. I leave my cell phone at home and I go into a state of utter panic. It is such an ingrained part of our world now.
Amneris