Week Five!

I have to admit that I’m kind of old school in terms of digital literacy. I hate reading long texts on a computer screen (I always print out the like 15 articles we’re all assigned to read each week for our classes), I just recently caved and joined Facebook, my TV has rabbit ears, and I love the way a new book smells. I’m not embarrassed to admit that my car has a cassette player, and that’s it. So I guess you could say that I’m living in the past in terms of digital technology. But it seems like an inevitability at this point, and if I’m going to be an effective teacher for the digital creatures that populate today’s high schools, then I better climb on board and join the revolution, right?

Wrong. Though I have listened intently during this program as the various “colleagues…” who have taught our classes have tried to convince us to incorporate technology into our classrooms in just about every way, from blogs and wikis to the dreaded “clicker quizzes,” I think the biggest lesson for me has been one of balance. Sure, I’ll incorporate some technology into my classrooms, but let’s just put it this way, I won’t be having my students blog anytime soon. Maybe I’m living in the past. If my school was equipped with a computer for each student or several computers in each classroom, then I would feel very differently, but that is not the technological reality for the vast majority of school. Realistically, we fight all other teachers for lab time in a couple of classroom sized labs, or maybe the school has one or two mobile labs. At that point, the issue is not only convenience but also access. If we cannot secure a lab at least once a week or so, then I can’t justify having my students finish this stuff up at home, where they have differing levels of access to these tools.

In my planning for student teaching, I have seen the combative nature of teachers as they jockey for lab time. I have to teach the research paper, so lab time is a must-have for researching during the month-long project. My lab times have been shuffled around over and over again, and the whole thing has become a huge hassle. Available lab time now dictates the path of my research paper unit. To be honest, I have been willing to deal with the frustrations of fighting for lab time because it is absolutely necessary for the research paper. I don’t think that I would necessarily have the same patience if the project at stake was a wiki or blog. Once schools invest more in these technologies, it will be easier for teachers to take advantage of them, but at this point I feel that my time is better spent creating quality lessons rather than dealing with the mysteries of media center scheduling.

This posting was not initially meant as a rant against technology in the classroom. Far from it, actually. Used properly, it can be a great way to engage students. Though recently I have seen the difficulties first-hand, I have had many wonderful experiences with technology in the classroom. As a teacher, though, my goal is to introduce students to new experiences that will help them grow as people. After all, isn’t the goal of education (as noted in the Jenkins piece) to “ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, [creative] and economic life?” The Pew research study states that already “more than one-half of all American teens—and 57 percent of teens who use the internet—could be considered media creators” (Jenkins 6). Today’s students are familiar with technology. They use it outside of school. Beach’s article even admits that one of the challenges of the digital technology push in the schools is that teachers need to come to terms with the fact that they are no longer experts (meaning that the students are more tech-savvy than they are). So if the job of teachers is, in part, to introduce students to novel, life-changin’ stuff, then we need to stop thinking that technology is the automatic answer. Teens are already doing technology outside of the classroom, and in my opinion, there doesn’t always have to be congruence between the in-school and out-of-school activities of students. Yes, this can create relevancy, but a good teacher doesn’t need to rely on the “hey you guys do this outside of school so we’re gonna do it here” factor in order to create relevance for students.

So let’s give students some different kinds of experiences. Let’s help them read a novel, appreciate the way it feels in their hands and the way the pages curl from previous readers. Didn’t one of our readings suggest that reading is a social act, because passing on a recommendation for a good book and sharing in that experience with someone else is rewarding? The same is true for writing. How about helping students appreciate the feeling of a pen as it goes across paper, looking back at your work after an hour or so and seeing pages and pages of creative work in your own handwriting? This is a very fulfilling experience, and I don’t think it translates to the computer screen. If students are not going to get these sensory experiences in an English class, then where else will it happen? Again, I’m not hating on technology, but these old school pleasures are something to keep in mind.


My resource link for this week is: http://teacher2b.com/

This site has lots of lesson plans and guides for teaching creative writing, literature, etc., and is pretty basic and user-friendly in design.