I never thought I would have a blog, but considering it has been assigned, there seems no better time to start! Technology, it seems, is ever changing and I'm bringing myself up to speed. When I was in elementary school, we didn't have computers in the classroom. Not even at the teacher's desks. There was a Mac lab in the library where we learned to type, use paint, and played a lot of Oregon Trail. Our teachers didn't use slideshows or PowerPoint, they used overhead projectors and no one was the wiser. In a time when chewing gum in school was outlawed, we were more concerned about who had the 96 pack of crayons.
In junior high everyone had an AOL screen name and a computer at home on which to use it. We were required to take a speed typing class and learned the art of adding animations and sounds to PowerPoint presentations (can you say obnoxious?) Now, our school papers required some level of research and all the information we could ever want was readily available to us on our computers. Cue the lessons on plagiarism, intellectual property and the ever increasing urge to cut and paste. By 8th grade, AIM was out and MySpace was in.... until the birth of Facebook, that is. Growing up, we have interacted with our friends online as often as we did in person.
In high school, technology became a more relevant part of the classroom. A few of our teachers used PowerPoint presentations to lecture, though it was rare; we even had a few smart boards installed at my high school, but it was difficult for them to be integrated into the classroom, because the technology was so unfamiliar to both teachers and students.
I hope that technology is something that I can work into my classroom as a teacher. It's important because it is becoming the most common medium for communication and something that young people especially are extremely proficient in. I do hope to use it in an effective way, though I think that it can be overdone. When you get to a point that its use is distracting rather than supplemental to the learning environment, you have to rethink the way the technology is being used and come up with a new strategy. Hopefully I'll be able to incorporate it into my future as a tool to get kids excited about learning, specifically excited about learning history, which we all know can be a challenge.
Until next time,
Purrrrra
