Technology and Education Have a Revolving Door
By: Laura Stokes
When I purchase a computer, take it out of the box to set it up, and turn it on for the first time, a familiar feeling overwhelms me. It is one of excitement and eagerness because the new product is going to open doors to things that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience. However, it is extremely frustrating because within 6 months, my beautiful new computer is outdated, and now I’m feeling like I need another new one because it does “X, Y and Z” better than my current computer. This is the life of technology and it is always changing.
The funny thing is that teaching and learning work in the exact same way that technology does. There are always new ideas coming out every day and being able to take advantage of them to increase my knowledge is very crucial to being a good teacher. We have access to the Internet and there is a world full of great resources for teachers to use. Taking the time to find the resources that will work for you is incredibly rewarding.
As I look back on the program and what I have already accomplished, it makes me eager to continue moving forward and learning. I plan on doing this by taking professional development geared around ideas that are hot topics to my students and I. When we look at how far education has come, from a single room schoolhouse to single classrooms that are differentiated even more by individual students, it didn’t happen overnight. It also didn’t happen from one single person. Collaboration is a key ingredient to keeping your ideas new and exciting. The saying “two heads are better than one” holds true to the concept of idea sharing. You can learn so much from networking with people you work with, or even those in the same profession as you. I plan to continue doing this by collaborating with my colleagues and not being selfish with ideas I come up with as well.
Professional journals always have studies based on many of the new concepts and ideas that hit the education platform. Being sure to stay up to date on the concepts and the research to back them can help me continue to teach using best practices.
As for the technology aspect, one of the best ways to learn it is through trial and error. Technology can be so complicated that even the creators face issues they didn’t expect. Honestly, how many times have you gone to the “trouble shooting” page in the manual of an electronic and actually found the problem you were having? I can’t say this happens often to me. However, taking the initiative to learn about a new electronic gadget, or software program will not only give me a better insight into it, but it will give me experience to help build confidence on. The more that I have played around on my portfolio website Weebly the better and more confident I feel I have become at creating and changing pages I already made. I am horrible with directions and sometimes I find the best way to learn my way around a city is to get lost a few times. The same can be true with learning a new technology. Allowing myself to “get lost” a few times in the program will help me learn the ins and outs and hopefully get me to a confidence level that I would be comfortable with taking into my classroom. There are so many wonderful tools to teach with and many of them come from technology, but what good is a tool if you don’t know how to use it? Taking the time to go to a course on it, or play with it will help me to learn about the tool and what the pros and cons of using it in the classroom might be. A supervisor may not say, “Hey there is a professional development class that is going to be offering a training on this new software we bought” therefore, I will need to be aware of how to locate professional development and not depend on others to find it for me.
When it comes down to it, overall I don’t want to become stagnant in the way that I teach, and unwilling to continue to learn more and be open to the fresh new ideas that are being born everyday. I could have gone to school without many of the forms of technology and learned, and in fact I did. Kids today almost seem wired differently, and in order to gain their attention you must incorporate technology into the classrooms. It is a major part of their life, and a key to helping them be successful. I can only imagine what new things will be coming out in the future, but accepting that the kids will be growing up around it, makes it that much more important for me to find a way to incorporate it into the classroom. If I don’t allow myself to be aware of the changes that happen in the world everyday, my students will be stuck learning in a way that is not engaging to them, and I don’t want that to happen. My future goal is to keep an eye out for changes in education as well as best practices for teaching in today’s day in age. Just like a revolving door, I would like to see the old stagnant ways of teaching go out, while the new engaging ways come in. The best way to do that is to take advantage of as many learning opportunities from as many people and places as I can.
The funny thing is that teaching and learning work in the exact same way that technology does. There are always new ideas coming out every day and being able to take advantage of them to increase my knowledge is very crucial to being a good teacher. We have access to the Internet and there is a world full of great resources for teachers to use. Taking the time to find the resources that will work for you is incredibly rewarding.
As I look back on the program and what I have already accomplished, it makes me eager to continue moving forward and learning. I plan on doing this by taking professional development geared around ideas that are hot topics to my students and I. When we look at how far education has come, from a single room schoolhouse to single classrooms that are differentiated even more by individual students, it didn’t happen overnight. It also didn’t happen from one single person. Collaboration is a key ingredient to keeping your ideas new and exciting. The saying “two heads are better than one” holds true to the concept of idea sharing. You can learn so much from networking with people you work with, or even those in the same profession as you. I plan to continue doing this by collaborating with my colleagues and not being selfish with ideas I come up with as well.
Professional journals always have studies based on many of the new concepts and ideas that hit the education platform. Being sure to stay up to date on the concepts and the research to back them can help me continue to teach using best practices.
As for the technology aspect, one of the best ways to learn it is through trial and error. Technology can be so complicated that even the creators face issues they didn’t expect. Honestly, how many times have you gone to the “trouble shooting” page in the manual of an electronic and actually found the problem you were having? I can’t say this happens often to me. However, taking the initiative to learn about a new electronic gadget, or software program will not only give me a better insight into it, but it will give me experience to help build confidence on. The more that I have played around on my portfolio website Weebly the better and more confident I feel I have become at creating and changing pages I already made. I am horrible with directions and sometimes I find the best way to learn my way around a city is to get lost a few times. The same can be true with learning a new technology. Allowing myself to “get lost” a few times in the program will help me learn the ins and outs and hopefully get me to a confidence level that I would be comfortable with taking into my classroom. There are so many wonderful tools to teach with and many of them come from technology, but what good is a tool if you don’t know how to use it? Taking the time to go to a course on it, or play with it will help me to learn about the tool and what the pros and cons of using it in the classroom might be. A supervisor may not say, “Hey there is a professional development class that is going to be offering a training on this new software we bought” therefore, I will need to be aware of how to locate professional development and not depend on others to find it for me.
When it comes down to it, overall I don’t want to become stagnant in the way that I teach, and unwilling to continue to learn more and be open to the fresh new ideas that are being born everyday. I could have gone to school without many of the forms of technology and learned, and in fact I did. Kids today almost seem wired differently, and in order to gain their attention you must incorporate technology into the classrooms. It is a major part of their life, and a key to helping them be successful. I can only imagine what new things will be coming out in the future, but accepting that the kids will be growing up around it, makes it that much more important for me to find a way to incorporate it into the classroom. If I don’t allow myself to be aware of the changes that happen in the world everyday, my students will be stuck learning in a way that is not engaging to them, and I don’t want that to happen. My future goal is to keep an eye out for changes in education as well as best practices for teaching in today’s day in age. Just like a revolving door, I would like to see the old stagnant ways of teaching go out, while the new engaging ways come in. The best way to do that is to take advantage of as many learning opportunities from as many people and places as I can.
