What do we do when teachers go Word-happy? No, not verbally-happy, but Microsoft-Word-Processor-happy?
I have a professor who puts absolutely every resource into a Word document. If she gets information from a website, she simply copies and pastes it all into a document. Now, I'm not sure this is inherently a technological sin, but she never formats any of the information she copies. I find myself in class often thinking, "Why didn't we just look at the website? It probably would have been easier to read." If her information isn't see-able all the way to the back of the class, she doesn't bother to change the font, but she just zooms into the document. To make matters worse, she enjoys using all different colors of text.
Now these minor offenses may not be distracting to others in the class, but I find myself thinking about the formatting of the information instead of about the actual information I'm supposed to be digesting. This sounds to me like a language barrier between digital natives and digital immigrants.
I want to do my best to speak fluently to my students technologically, so that they don't even notice technology's use in the classroom.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
Reflection #5
Students must see why learning is relevant in order to consider it valuable.
This is a simple statement proved over and over by every discipline under the sun. How often have you heard students complain about how they will never use algebra or history in real life? And yet teachers have been forcing students to learn "irrelevant" subjects for centuries.
How does this relate to technology? Presently, technology is relevant. Reading and writing are not. As teachers, we walk a fine line between teaching what is theoretically relevant (calculus, Latin, handwriting, etc.) and what is practically relevant (economics, chemistry, computer technology, etc.).
This battle is nothing new. But with technology overtaking careers and dominating the workforce, teachers are questioning which subjects are still relevant. Perhaps here we should learn from the past and understand that, while technology is important, technological education should never be the be all and end all of education. Technology vanishes in a moment.
I think the key to this problem is thorough integration of technology and classical education. Students should learn both what is practical, that is, what is useful in our world right now, and what is proven, that is, what was useful in the past and most likely still useful in a world we can only imagine.
This is a simple statement proved over and over by every discipline under the sun. How often have you heard students complain about how they will never use algebra or history in real life? And yet teachers have been forcing students to learn "irrelevant" subjects for centuries.
How does this relate to technology? Presently, technology is relevant. Reading and writing are not. As teachers, we walk a fine line between teaching what is theoretically relevant (calculus, Latin, handwriting, etc.) and what is practically relevant (economics, chemistry, computer technology, etc.).
This battle is nothing new. But with technology overtaking careers and dominating the workforce, teachers are questioning which subjects are still relevant. Perhaps here we should learn from the past and understand that, while technology is important, technological education should never be the be all and end all of education. Technology vanishes in a moment.
I think the key to this problem is thorough integration of technology and classical education. Students should learn both what is practical, that is, what is useful in our world right now, and what is proven, that is, what was useful in the past and most likely still useful in a world we can only imagine.
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