by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.
I hear so many educators complain about how technology is hijacking our students’ education. How they don’t know how to be digital citizens. How they are addicted. How all they care about is YouTube and Facebook and their social lives. So instead of teaching it they dismiss it, poopoo it, and try to ban it.
Tell me… How do you propose students learn about being digital citizens if not at school?
Note over. And out.
A short while ago I began a discussion on LinkedIn asking if people agreed with my statement that integrating technology was not the goal. The comments were rich, if you are a member of TIE (Technology in Education) at LinkedIn, go ahead and read the comments. So many good thoughts.
I thought I’d open it up for discussion here as well.
So…
I talk about it in more detail in this little video created for DevPro – a professional development project initiated by consultants Marc-André Lalande and Avi Spector that aims at flipping PD for Quebec’s English sector adult education teachers.
Today I read this, written by Nathan Smith, Director of Technology at the College of Education & Human Services of Utah State University.
“…Connecting with our students in meaningful, positive ways – making each of them feel wanted, important, safe, valued, and needed – is to me the real “art” of teaching. I call this aspect of teaching “the human touch.” Technology used in education needs to enhance the human touch…”
What Nathan calls the human touch, I refer to as relationship. I just love how he put it. It is so simple, so true. If we use technology (and really, that phrase ‘use technology’ is so contrived and artificial) to help our students succeed in ways that make sense for them and what they are learning then we are living and practicing in the realm of human touch. That will forever be my goal.
…technology integration is NOT about technology integration
…students (and some teachers) need to be taught how to use technology ethically – how to be ethical digital citizens
…first we need to care, then we need to know what we are teaching, and only then we can find the proper tools to help make learning happen.
…teachers need differentiation of PD as much as students need differentiation of learning activities
…listening is important when wanting to make change
…grammar should not be the focus of language learning
…technology is but a tool. It is not a literacy.
…we can’t assume that students know what we think they should know by now
Why is there such a love affair with interactive white boards? Soon after the PQ government was elected this fall, it announced a moratorium on the previous government’s plan to put an interactive white board in every classroom across the province.
I say this is a good thing.
IWBs are expensive and do very little to help students develop competencies.
So why the love affair? It’s an easy way to say, yes, we are integrating technology into our classrooms without really changing much. It integrates tech and maintains the status quo of teacher-centric classrooms.
Is that the source of the obsession, then? They make us look like we are using technology to meet the needs of our students but really they are meeting the needs of educators who are afraid or don’t know how to give up the central role as teacher in their classrooms?
What do you think?