Wednesday, June 30, 2010
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.
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Hey Monte,Great blog! I agree that Kristin and Jeff have great enthusiasm- it's infectious :) Interested to see where this class takes us...
ReplyDeleteGotta love that enthusiasm. This will be exciting as we MAC'ers have the potential to be on the cutting edge!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your "enthusiasm" comment - it makes me feel that the class will really be beneficial and productive. Also, you bring up something I hadn't thought about - that it will be our duty as teachers to prepare our students to use technology in the "real world", and not just use it to learn, since it will most likely be essential in their professional lives.
ReplyDeleteMonte, you raise a number of interesting points. One of them..I'll paraphrase here, so indulge me ;-)..has to do with our responsibility to our students vis-a-vis technology. This responsibility could extend beyond the content of our discipline, to the imperative to give students meaningful experience using technology for their long-term benefit, connecting to the world of work, etc. You raise a really important point, and I like the spirit of challenge here.
ReplyDeleteI have to add that, as a language person myself, I see some of the most exciting "affordances" of the new tech tools as playing out in the language classroom. We'll soon be looking at podcasting, and goodness knows that language educators need opportunities to hear their students speak, and to provide their students with safe opportunities to do so. Podcasting is a powerful tool in this connection, and Kristin is a fabulous resource person in this regard (among many others).
The comment you made about the technology begin useful, or relevant to instruction, is an important one. I advocate technology in the secondary classroom; however, I agree that it must be strategically applied. Our challenge is not only to learn technology processes; we must be thoughtful about how we integrate it into our curriculum, our objective being to enhance our subject content, and not overshadow it.
ReplyDeleteMindy Broderick
I agree with your thoughts that we must enable students to learn with technology to help them later in life. We just have to think of ways to do it in a way that teaches them, but also engages them. I think 504 will help us with this role.
ReplyDelete1. Power to the Latinists and their pictures of Roman ruins!
ReplyDelete2. I really like the picture of you with a camel, very original... I'm brainstorming now on what my picture should be.
3. I think you make a really good point about our responsibility to ensure that our students can learn with technology since they will need that skill later in life, I had not thought about it in that way and I'm glad you brought it up!