As this literacies and technologies class is drawing to an end, I
realize that my grappling has become very different over the last few weeks.
Initially, grappling was something that I was doing with the text and
myself, trying to strike a balance between understanding the theoretical
reasoning behind having technology in the classroom and figuring out where I
stood on the barometer of technology implementation in the classroom.
However, as the weeks have ticked by, I have come to notice that my impenetrable
outer shell protecting me from technological invasion has become weaker.
Now, when I read the theory of Lankshear and Knoble or the practical
application courtesy of Will Richardson, I don't find myself skeptically
proceeding from paragraph to paragraph, sighing each time a technology is
discussed and its significance is defended. Instead, I read what they are
saying and think about how I can take their information and make it work for
me. I think this is the biggest change that I have undergone throughout
these six or so weeks. Instead of me trying to fit myself into
technology, I see how I can fit technology to my needs. Perhaps why I was
so apprehensive in the beginning is because I viewed technology as an all or
nothing deal, either I used it or I didn't, end of story. But, as I have
come to learn, it's not about all or nothing, it is about what you use and how
you use it. Sure there are lots of classrooms that may be all or nothing, and I
am sure they work quite well using that framework. However, that is not how I
have begun to envision my class.
After speaking with Paul Bogush,
reading Lankshear and Knoble, speaking with peers and tinkering with the
technology myself, I have come to the conclusion that although technology is
still a very scary thing I am willing to give it a shot, in very small,
manageable doses at first. Rather
than seeing technology as something that can be supplemented to make a class
more enjoyable, I am SLOWLY beginning
to see technology and education as codependent. Students are capable of using the Internet to produce
interesting, well thought out creations as opposed to using it to rapidly find
the quick version of last nights reading that wasn’t completed. Perhaps my difficulty with technology
isn’t that it will be used in my classroom, but instead it is because when I
think of technology I think of how it was used when I was a student – read:
only used to play games to fill gaps of time, or send us off to research
something without even knowing how to tell the difference between a credible
and a non-credible source. Rather
than keep myself in the past, I need to allow myself to catch up with the times
and not be afraid to have things go less than smooth in the classroom. Technology is as much about being literate
in a hyper-connected world as it is about taking risks and the willingness to
have things go really really
bad. Learning comes from
experience and if I don’t allow myself or my students to experience what the
technology has to offer, I am doing them and myself a huge disservice as an
educator and as a citizen of the world.
The
final chapter of Will Richardson’s book, Blogs,
Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms is titled
“What It All Means,” and as I was rereading it in preparation for our
discussion, I found myself having a very different reaction compared to when I
was reading the opening chapters.
In this chapter, Richardson talks about 10 “Big Shifts” in how to go
about teaching content in this technological world. And, although each “Big Shift” held something valuable, the
shift that stuck with is “Teaching is Conversation, Not Lecture” (p. 151). I think this is rooted in my desire to
be different than the teachers that I had, nestled carefully in the desire to
inspire students to be lifelong learners.
The exchange of information is education in itself, but when we open the
opportunity for exchange to the world, the possibilities for individual
enrichment (let’s not call it education) are endless.
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