Today, in one of my classes, we were giving presentations on various Sherlock Holmes stories. My group used the run-of-the-mill PowerPoint presentation, and I suspected that everyone else would do the same. The rest of the groups, however, did not have a technological element at all.
It particularly struck me when one group presented a comparison of Holmes and his archenemy Moriarty written on a chart that they unrolled. I started pondering about how immersed classrooms are in technology, so much so that it's shocking when we don't see it. Merely 10 years ago, this was the standard mode of presentation.
The group's lack of technology almost served as a shock factor for me. It made me pay attention more, just as the inclusion of technology in a class 10 years ago would have done. Perhaps we are so used to technology that taking it out of the classroom is now more engaging than leaving it in.
Of course, I understand that this is not always the case and that technology has a valuable place in classrooms. It engages students in ways that traditional instruction never could. However, in our age of techno-mania, perhaps a return to the basics--a technological detox, if you will--would benefit students.
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