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.
Reading this made me laugh! I often find this with teachers who are a bit older. I always cringe at how hard they are trying to incorporate technology moslty because of how hard they fail at it. I have a professor who still shows VCR tapes in class, but he doesn't even know how to turn them on. He always has a student do that for him.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really sure that there is much of a solution to this problem. I mean, as students we could suggest something to our teachers, but they probably would have a hard time remembering how to implement what we tell them. I think you put it perfectly: it's simply a language barrier between natives and immigrants, and we'll just have to deal with it.
Oh my goodness that is the worst! I have a teacher that does the exact same thing and it drives me insane. It is horrible to look at and in my opinion makes the teacher look unorganized and unprepared.It's amazing how sometimes even the simplest things such as reformatting or so important and effective in learning today! It makes me self conscious that one day I may do something equally obnoxious to my future students in case I am not up on technology the way they are! It is a good reminder to be conscious of how we are using technology and whether we are letting it benefit students or hinder them from learning.
ReplyDelete