Day Two: Technology in the classroom

I love this prompt. It forces us to recognize that there is so much untapped potential in the use of technology in our classrooms.

First, some background info and a rant: I took this summer to really dig into research on different ideas to shape my classroom and found an interesting question (citation to come - I can't remember where I read this nugget) asking us why, with all of the technological advances in the past 20 years, has school remained largely the same? This thought really struck me as important - because it immediately drew attention to the divide between how technology has changed the world, but how it has not changed our classrooms; school looks very similar to the school prior to the era of BYOD. I'm afraid we've ignored many opportunities to truly enhance learning with technology out of fear that students can't handle it, or that they will be too distracted, or that we will have to change the technology in a couple years anyway, because it's always changing (and yes, to all of those, but it does not mean we shouldn't use it). We have made some progress integrating technology, but when I look at how technology has changed the world in the past 20 years, and how school itself has not been as changed by those same advances, I see a huge gap.

Rant over. I promise I won't be this long-winded once I get back into the swing of blogging.

My school is entering its second year of one-to-one iPad implementation. Using this technology has required a learning shift from both teachers and students; we need students to realize that the iPad is a tool for production, not consumption; we need teachers to realize the technology's full potential to assure that learning can happen anytime, anywhere. We've made a lot of progress in the past year, but we still have a lot of work to do to make those goals a reality.


To that end - learning happens anytime, anywhere - I plan on using Twitter in my classes. I want my students to begin to engage in texts from any place, at any time. I hope to show them that they can use Twitter as a method of learning and meaningful collaboration, not just gossip and clever hashtags. I want my students  to shift their thinking about technology from a device for distraction to an invention for inquiry. If they can see how this one piece of social media can be used in a productive way, I hope that they can then transfer that understanding to the other social media sites they currently use, or will use in the future.