The Did You Know video was not that surprising to me. Not only am I very aware of how technology has changed drastically in the last few years, I have seen it in my own return to the classroom (there were no online classes during my undergraduate degree). Last year my best friend’s classroom got a smart board. When she finished the two day mandatory training she had a co-workers son play with it for 20 minutes to see how hard it was going to be to relate the technology to her students… he figured out all the features in 10 minutes, and was asking her if he could hook-up his iPod to it to show her a funny video on a bigger screen!
We as educators have to realize that as easy as it is to just plop the students in front of technology that they find entertaining (like we use to do in front of the TV), it does not mean we are helping them! There is a happy medium out there; I am that person in constant search for it! That happy medium requires not only a certain degree of technology but also for the teacher to help students learn how to use that technology constructively. It is no use to know how to text and twitter and update your Facebook page if they don’t understand the moral, ethical and legal implications of sexting and cyber-bullying.
Sometimes technology is just what is more convenient and easiest, so we dump on it and allow our curriculum to be set by it. The hardest part is not deciding between teaching with or without technology; it is getting our students to understand why learning is important. We as educators need to instill in our students how using current and future technology to acquire knowledge that is accurate and useful to what one needs to complete a task is going to be essential for when they ‘grow up’ and join the work force. I worked in a business for years, and I trained many a bright young person straight out of school that complained about the computers and the networks being slow; but could not think their way out of a problem. Those skills are just as important as being able to keep students entertained in the classroom with a fancy new web page or a twitter account.
So I think we are doing the right thing by sometimes being cautious with the technology we introduce in our classroom, and I think we are doing the wrong thing by limiting (financially) what students see in the classroom. That happy medium of mine requires both. Today’s students need to understand our thought pattern regarding technology and its application in a real world scenario so that they can understand its importance in their future.
