Education has gone digital. Districts are pushing for more technology to be used in the classroom and teachers that are digital immigrants are struggling to keep up. Although I was born into a world in which technology has been flourishing, I myself have found it hard to keep up and I understand the frustrations of teachers that are not comfortable using technology. I was always hesitant about using technology, worrying that my paper would delete or the long email that I sent to a parent or principal did not send. If I did not get a response back right away I would continuously check my Sentbox as if the message I sent was going to “disappear”. At the beginning of last year I would consider myself a technocrat; I attempted to use some technology such as computers and smartboards but I was not very technologically savvy.
This June at my job in Coventry we put on an ESL family night for the students and their parents. My director made it a requirement to use technology for the students to create the presentations because the pgg’s (personal growth goals) for this year were based on incorporating technology into our teaching. I was not ecstatic about this but I began researching and found some really great websites. My students created cartoons, blogs, Google slides, and more as I walked them through the process, assisting when necessary. The result was so rewarding and as I stood there watching my students standing in front of a screen showcasing their presentations my perspective on technology began to change. It was here that I began to shift to a techno-traditionalist.
It was perfect timing that two weeks later I started this class. I learned about other tools I had no idea existed. It was exciting, engaging and fun! Over the past eight days I came to believe that technology is a useful tool and not a big green monster out to get me. I needed this push to really step out of my comfort zone. I was intrigued by all of the media and digital texts that I could produce and felt ready to start using them in my classroom. This class also opened my eyes as to how students can benefit from incorporating technology in the classroom, especially by teaching them to be producers. Although my students did act as producers when they made their family night presentations, prior to that I only had my students act as consumers of digital information. In fact, before this class I didn’t even realize the impact I had on my students by allowing them to create their presentations.
By the end of the first week of our class I had lots of digital tools floating around in my head and did not know what to do with them. After doing some research on LiveBinders last week, I decided I wanted to take it further and organize these websites into a live binder for my final project. Besides the websites we have learned in this class, I included other websites that I have used or heard about in the past and I found some new ones while researching. Under each subtab I listed the names of the websites, a brief description, and a picture. The actual website is included in a hyperlink connected to the name.
Trying to figure out something new can always be tricky at first. As I was creating my binder I hit a few bumps in the road. I had trouble uploading pictures at one point. I could not figure out how to get them onto the screen so I did some Googling and realized that I had to copy the URL image code and paste it in the source box. Livebinders is located in a cloud so it can be set as public or private. I plan on setting my binder as public because I want others to be able to access it and use my resources.
I will continue to add to my Technology binder and refer to it throughout this school year. Now I have an organized place to refer to these great resources so when the school year comes I won’t forget about them. My journey using Livebinders and technology as a whole has not stopped here. I see myself transforming into a techno-constructivist; my new outlook on the importance of technology in the classroom pushes me to want to use new tools to change my approaches to teaching and learning. A goal for this coming year is to use these online tools while assisting my students in becoming digital natives.
As I dive in with my students this year, I do not want them to substitute “conversation for connection” as Turkle discusses. Although I still think all of the new technology can be scary, I think I need to embrace it. Part of my job as the teacher is to make sure that students understand how to evaluate information they found on the web and teach them “digital wisdom”. Hopefully I will address Wesch’s “problem of significance” by incorporating technology. It is changing so quickly that I must be sure to keep up with it, especially for the sake of my students.
The digital world is changing rapidly and we must always be learning new tools, but we must also remember the importance of not sacrificing conversation for connection. I am excited to dive in this year and use many of these resources with my students, even if some if it isn’t so pretty at first. An old quote that perfectly relates to this fear is, “If you’ve never failed, you’ve never tried anything new” and I am ready! There are so many amazing resources on the web and I believe that technology is a tool that should be utilized/integrated in the classroom to enhance learning, engage students, and develop essential skills for the 21st century.
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