Incorporating Technology in the Classroom.

Forty years ago I sat in a classroom, pen and pencil were my primary tools in most of my classes, a slide rule for Physics classes.  It is hard to believe that my cell phone has more memory than the IBM computer I owned back in the 80s. It's all a blur, how quickly technology changed the way we handle information, one idea igniting hundreds, and thousands more ideas. The possibilities today seem almost limitless.  I suppose the limit would be how much we as humans can learn during our lifetime and that is where teaching comes into the equation. We don't necessarily have to know it all to teach our students to be curious about the world, we just need to be able to open the door for them so they are able to explore and find their own interests.  

The population of students I work with unfortunately have not had a good relationship with school.  Their goal is basically to be done with school, the quicker, the better. They treat their assignments in a similar matter, do the least amount to pass and get credit. My biggest challenge has been to motivate my students to research, to think deeper, to just not settle for the first answer they come across when they google. If only they knew what it was like to have to write out all your assignments by hand, type them on a typewriter with no spell correction, and to use an encyclopedia for all your research, they would be grateful for modern technology. They would be thrilled at the ease of it all, but they are products of a technological age, and it would be hard for them to imagine that world. The reason I became a teacher was because I love to learn and it doesn't matter whether you are product of the 1950s or 2015, learning is learning and using the tools of the day to achieve your goals can only enhance your learning. What took crayons, colored pencils , scissors and glue to make project posters in the past can now be precisely presented in digital form on a Smart Board.  It is all exciting to me, and it is my job to inspire the same enthusiasm in my students.

This year is the first year that I have been able to actively use Google docs with my students.  I have spent most of the year interacting with them through e-mail, forms, docs, and slides.  Figuring it out how it all works for our assignments has been a journey.  By now, my long term students are becoming more proficient using Google and for the most part they can complete tasks without instruction. Unfortunately, my student population is always changing. New students come in with different levels of experience with Google, and their ability to use and understand how to use Google differs.  With most students I am successful with teaching substitution, with fewer numbers, we reach augmentation, and very few are able to master modification.  Redefinition is not practical, my students are not allowed to publish their products through blogs or on the internet in the public realm.