When I first started teaching at Elmira twenty-three years ago I was only the second teacher in the whole school to have a home computer. Mr. Clausi, the math teacher, was the first. My computer was an Apple 2C, and it was a blast to use! I'd just come from working at a private computer firm where even back then we already had in-house email--and believe me that was pretty unheard-of in the mid-eighties. Short and long of it, when I first started teaching I was pretty darn connected.
Then five years later I decided to switch to part-time teaching so I could investigate other things in life. Those other things did not much include technology. I think I decided that creative people (whatever the heck I meant by that) really didn't need to be bothered with technology. I went through a phase, and a wonderful phase it was, don't get me wrong, of withdrawing from the world--we didn't even have a TV for a while.
So, thirteen years later, when I decided to go back to teaching full-time, I was not even close to being on the cutting edge of technology. I didn't own a cell phone, I didn't know how to text. You get the idea.
Then a couple years ago, I started watching what was happening to my dad. He's a man who retired just as computers hit the business world--and he never bothered to try to keep up. Heck, he never even bothered to figure out video machines, let alone computers or cell phones. Now, he's so far out of it, there's no catching up. At a time in his life when he would be less lonely if he knew how to use email, he can't. At a time in his life when, if he could use the internet, he'd had lots of fascinating reading to keep him stimulated, he can't. I decided I didn't want to be him.
So, I got off my creative-people-don't-do-technology high-horse and got to work catching up. And you know what? Technology doesn't get in the way of my creativity at all-- it actually helps it. And now I'm having a great time applying the new Web 2.0 technology (see me throwing the cool terms around?) to my teaching style.
What we've all started to realize over the last few years is that this new generation of kids is a different breed. For members of this new generation, technology is the water in which they swim. They work best when they can multi--task, collaborate, customize their world around them. And these are the exciting people I'm in a classroom with everyday. The more I start to use things like wikis and blogs and Smartboards in class, the more I get to see their abilities shine.
Mind you ,I have to be willing to be embarrassed at the front of the room when I can't get the Smartboard to do what I think it should do, but what the heck. A part of what I'm teaching them is that we've all just got to jump in and swim! Someday they may be the ones who've fallen behind whatever their kids are discovering. I hope that the least I can do for them now is show by example that we've all just got to leap in and have a go at it, whatever the next 'it' will be.
Then five years later I decided to switch to part-time teaching so I could investigate other things in life. Those other things did not much include technology. I think I decided that creative people (whatever the heck I meant by that) really didn't need to be bothered with technology. I went through a phase, and a wonderful phase it was, don't get me wrong, of withdrawing from the world--we didn't even have a TV for a while.
So, thirteen years later, when I decided to go back to teaching full-time, I was not even close to being on the cutting edge of technology. I didn't own a cell phone, I didn't know how to text. You get the idea.
Then a couple years ago, I started watching what was happening to my dad. He's a man who retired just as computers hit the business world--and he never bothered to try to keep up. Heck, he never even bothered to figure out video machines, let alone computers or cell phones. Now, he's so far out of it, there's no catching up. At a time in his life when he would be less lonely if he knew how to use email, he can't. At a time in his life when, if he could use the internet, he'd had lots of fascinating reading to keep him stimulated, he can't. I decided I didn't want to be him.
So, I got off my creative-people-don't-do-technology high-horse and got to work catching up. And you know what? Technology doesn't get in the way of my creativity at all-- it actually helps it. And now I'm having a great time applying the new Web 2.0 technology (see me throwing the cool terms around?) to my teaching style.
What we've all started to realize over the last few years is that this new generation of kids is a different breed. For members of this new generation, technology is the water in which they swim. They work best when they can multi--task, collaborate, customize their world around them. And these are the exciting people I'm in a classroom with everyday. The more I start to use things like wikis and blogs and Smartboards in class, the more I get to see their abilities shine.
Mind you ,I have to be willing to be embarrassed at the front of the room when I can't get the Smartboard to do what I think it should do, but what the heck. A part of what I'm teaching them is that we've all just got to jump in and swim! Someday they may be the ones who've fallen behind whatever their kids are discovering. I hope that the least I can do for them now is show by example that we've all just got to leap in and have a go at it, whatever the next 'it' will be.
It's also our jobs as teachers to make sure they are literate in the 2009 sense of literate. And that means being able to negotiate all sorts of communication online--blogging, wiki-ing, linking, not just texting and Facebooking. This era's idea of literacy is much more than simply being able to read and write.
Well, I have to go and check my Facebook and Twitter and my class wiki because my grade tens are writing a good old-fashioned short story this weekend, and someone may have a question for me. And after that's done, I'll sit down and work on my good old-fashioned novel that I'm writing on this brand new Dell laptop.
Interesting connection there, swimming and technology. Never would have thought of that. Don't feel embaressed about the Smart Board. They're new and complex. My mom runs into similar troubles with our VHS player.
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