Unlike the majority of schools in Michigan, my school did not start this past week; we will begin on Monday. This late start was due in part because of technology. My school was fortunate enough to have a bond proposal pass last fall. This proposal afforded my students and staff new classrooms, an art room update, an art gallery, state of the art machines for the industrial arts program, smart boards for every classroom, Mac books for every teacher, elmo’s, digital projectors in every room, and a boat load of computer programs.
I love and hate technology. I love anything that is able to improve my quality of life. And when technology is working properly, it is a thing of beauty. But technology can be a pain when one has worked for eight hours planning a lesson that requires students to use computers and the Internet (by planning I mean making sure that each website works, that the links on those websites work, that each of the computers is running correctly, creating the worksheet, installing software on a computer so that the non-reader in the class is able to listen to any and all text on the websites), only to have over half of the websites needed for the lesson be down.
The best way to describe the district that I work is to say that it is made up of the “haves and have nots”. Many of my students have lots of toys and gadgets (computers, cell phones, I-phones, ect…), however, there are those students that do not have a computer, cell phone, or even televisions. This makes it difficult to have students do independent learning activities at home that require advanced technology. The truly sad part is that many of these students learn the material better when they are able to use those technologies that they do not have.
In the article, Beyond Technology Integration: The Case for Technology Transformation, the authors state that schools need to change the approach from teaching everyone the same things at the same rate. They argue that we need to teach students at a pace that is right for each individual, and that we need to teach students in different ways - the ways that each learns best. At the time that this article was written, this may have seemed like a radical idea, but many of the teacher in-services that we have in my district focus on this idea of “differentiated instruction.” The article discusses the movement from giving students grades to a checklist of requirements ensuring that students have mastered material that is required. This step has not yet come to fruition. However, with the push for personalized curriculums, we may not be too far from seeing this happen in our school systems.
I know that when I first heard about differentiated instruction and personalized curriculums, I had the white-heat flash of a panic attack. A number of questions filled my head. How am I going to make sure that every child is taught in the way that he or she learns best? How am I going to keep track of what each student is required to learn? How am I going to have the time to make separate lesson plans for each student? After discussion with colleagues I soon realized that it does not happen overnight. This, like many things, is going to be a slow process. The most important thing is to get started. Pick a lesson or unit and think about the type of learners you have and how they learn best. I like to evaluate students to determine their learning styles. I then try to integrate at least 4 different learning styles in each lesson. This means that each lesson has many different activities. Many of these activities integrate technology. I often have the students use computers, videos, voice recorders, video cameras, digital cameras, and manipulatives.
Upon reading the second article, Of Luddites, Learning, and Life, I found myself nodding my head in agreement at a lot of what Postman said. I thoroughly agreed with the conclusion of the piece. Postman stated that there is not an insufficient amount of information out there. The job of a school and a teacher is to help students sort and determine how to use the information they are receiving. Students are often able to find information. However, they often are unable to determine if it is relevant, useful information or accurate. Teachers help students sort and make use of information.
For technology to truly be useful for teachers and students, they must know how to use it. Both students and teachers need to be trained to use the technology offered to them. A school can have as many computers, smart boards, elmo’s and all the latest software, but if the majority of the students and teachers are unable to use it efficiently, it benefits no one.
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