As a person who has deleted social media accounts and is currently trying not to constantly be on my cell phone and computer, I am also trying to be a better teacher. This course is surprising me and opening my mind to the great things technology can bring to our lives and can bring to our classroom.
I recently watched a few videos about technology and the importance of technology in education. Future Learning is a mini documentary about how to engage students for the technologically-advanced future that they will face. Education innovators like Dr. Sugata Mitra, Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy; and Dr. Catherine Lucey, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF, share their views on technology and education and some of the things they shared, quick frankly, blew my mind.
Dr. Sugata Mitra mentioned a good point when he discussed that old educational modals were developed as military education, while Sal Khan says that old educational modals where students do drills and a teacher talks at them was a way to make people submissive. Today, however, we must prepare students for their future and their future will be a world that revolves around technology.
I think about my childhood without a computer and without the internet and compare it to today's children who grow up with technology in their hand the moment they're able to hold objects and I realize, yes, this is indeed their future. For me it's a bit of a sad realization that today's children will grow up so vastly different that I did. However, this documentary opened my mind to how we can use technology for educational purposes and I felt a bit of relief when I saw how truly engaged young learners are when they are learning via video games, iPads, and the internet.
I loved Sugata Mitra's experiment where he put computers in the slums in India. These were places where children had no idea what the internet was and had never seen a computer. However, he discovered that children in groups can teach themselves how to use a computer. He later said that learning is limitless when you remove the teacher, give children the ability to interact with each other and give them the internet. For me this was a powerful piece of the documentary. Children are motivated by technology and they can learn from technology and from working with each other.
Another important point and probably more relevant to my teaching was what Catherine Lucy, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF, said regarding adult education and technology. She said that adults learn something when they have a reason to learn it. Medical students at UCSF can learn anatomy from an application that puts it into real life perspective for them. As a teacher of ESL adult education, I thought about the ways that my students will need to use the internet for everyday life in the U.S. Many of my students are looking for jobs and many applications are online. They are all so eager to work and support their families. They know they need basic computer skills and have all recently enrolled in a course to learn how to use a computer. Something I can do to help them will be to bring them to the computer lab and practice searching for jobs and doing online practice job applications. I know they will be motivated by this because they are motivated to find work and provide for their families. This a a simple and basic way I can bring technology into my classroom that is relevant to my students' everyday lives.
Another video that I watched was Social Media Revolution. I purposefully chose to watch this because I over the past few years I see friends and family members addicted to social media and I have begun to hate social media because of it. So, I watched this video and learned about the impact of social media on our world. What I learned was that no matter what I do, social media is impacting the world so much that it's hard to live without. In regards to education, the thing that surprised me the most was that generations Y and Z consider email old technology and that some universities have even stopped giving email addresses! Yes...this was a wake up call for me, a previous self-proclaimed hater-of-technology...I need to wake up and realize my students need me to jump on the technology train!
At the end of the day what I gathered about my new views of technology was this:
Even though I hate certain aspects of technology (like people constantly on their phones and on social media) I can appreciate what technology can do in a classroom and I realized how technology is a great motivational tool for students of all ages.
Technology can be a great tool for educators and students. Our lives are centered around technology and in the future we won't be able to do some of the things we do now without technology. So, it is our duty as educators to bring technology into our classroom. Technology is quite fun in the classroom! When students are having fun, they are motivated and learn.
