Technology Again

While I was reading the Kadjer text for this week, I kept thinking that the stories sounded awfully familiar. And by the time that I got to the third page I realized that Kristen had assigned this chapter for us to read last semester. So after looking for the notes I took on the reading when I read it the first time (and not finding them) I skimmed through the rest of the chapter, remembering each classroom activity presented and the implications Kadjer states for using technology in the classroom and being slightly annoyed that I had to read the article again. However, this got me thinking about how we are being taught to use technology in our own classroom. What does it mean when we are assigned in two different classes to read the exact same article touting the benefits of using technology in the classroom? I decided that it seems that all of the instruction that we have had on using technology has projected it as a sort of “cure-all” for everything that could go wrong in the classroom. Technology will make kids engaged in their coursework; bring out struggling students’ hidden strengths; give students purpose for their work, etc, etc. And I do agree that technology has the possibility of doing this. However, it seems that every article we have read doesn’t want to admit that there are schools that don’t even come close to having the equipment or the funds available to incorporate this type of technology into their classroom. Nor do they give alternatives to how schools could incorporate these technology-based ideas into the classroom in the absence of some of the technological tools.

For my summative assessment on Romeo and Juliet, I had planned on giving my students the option of shooting a short commercial to sell the reading of Romeo and Juliet to other students. However, when I told my coordinating teacher about the project, she encouraged me to just have the students make posters as the school doesn’t have adequate equipment for students to effectively shoot and edit a commercial, which surprised me. North High School isn’t exactly a poor school, so for them not to have the equipment to do such a project was shocking. But then I realized that I was most likely so shocked because I had read so many articles and sat through so many classes that made the assumption that schools will have this technology at their fingertips and all that teachers will need to do is utilize it. Thus, I feel that although it is important for us to learn how to incorporate technology into the classroom and teach students to live in the “21^st century,” I also think that it is important to consider other options. It seems as though we are so focused on the end goal of incorporating technology into lessons that we have forgotten the more practical concerns of actually getting these technologies in the schools in the first place.

Here is my resource link from the NCTE on “Writing in the 21^st Century.” I also found a critique of this report on a blog. I thought it was interesting to have both sides as they seem to sum up the argument between the practical and the theoretical side of using technology in the classroom.