My take-away from our first class.

I have always been a ready adapter of technology for my own purposes; ever since the proliferation of personal technology (i.e. personal computers) first burst onto the scene, it has always been a pretty big factor for me. Therefore, this class holds a lot of interest. I believe that most secondary students do, or could, find technology to be similarly, if not more, useful for them. They will have to use it in their jobs, that is for sure. I am glad to see the standards that we saw today, but I think I need more time with them to warm up to them. They appear to be written in nebulous, overly complicated language, but my unfamiliarity with the terminology that permeates them is no doubt playing a role in that perception. I am also glad to see the enthusiasm of our instructors, and the attitude that I sense of their open-mindedness about how tech can be useful in teaching. I think there is no option in whether tech should be made to be useful in technology; it must be made to be useful, because very few students will not be required to make it useful in their work later. That was a complicated way of saying that we must enable them to learn via tech, because they will almost all be forced to do so later in order to make a living. I believe that it can be an engaging experience as well as a necessary one, and that is definitely something I saw stressed today, and was glad to see.