Tech(nology) Spec(trum)

My parents love to tell stories about writing papers on typewriters when they were in college and younger. Anytime my sister or I complained about our relic computer, my parents (as many do) started to remind us that, "we didn't even have computers to type our papers when we were younger." I used to roll my eyes and return to whatever I was doing. Now that I am back in a school environment though, and putting myself back in that culture, I'm starting to understand where they are coming from.

Reflecting on the tech in our placement assignment, it is surprising to see and hear how much things have changed since I was in high school. Even at Community, where there isn't a major emphasis on technology in the classroom, there are laptop carts for teachers to check out, a state of the art computer lab for the students, and encouragement from the administration to incorporate tech more. What was even more shocking than my experience though, was listening to the other students share their schools and classrooms. On one hand, you have Andrew's classroom in John Glenn where they don't even have wireless in the building and on the other you have Saline High School (Griffin and Laura) where they let students carry their phones with them at all times and even provide them with chargers for their phones in the classroom. I wonder what the effect of this access vs. absence of technology has on the students? Will students from Saline be more prepared to deal with the technology they are likely to encounter in their professions or will the students from John Glenn be better suited moving forward because they don't have the distractions of technology while they are in the classroom? Community seems to lie in the middle of these two extremes. There is technology, but it isn't all over the place nor is it the center of attention. I guess what I found most interesting from this assignment is the difference in how technology is used throughout high schools and classrooms and the difference that it might have on the students that attend these classes. Even within Community, there is a marked difference in how much the teachers utilize the technology that they have at their disposal. And what sorts of experience are students bringing to the classroom? Laptops are fantastic to have for the students, but if you have to spend two weeks teaching the students the basics of the technology, is it worth it?

These themes are not new to this class. On the contrary, we have been having conversations about these topics throughout the program. What is new though, is that now we are seeing it play out in actual classrooms and getting a better sense of what the effects are on students as opposed to just speculating and discussing in our classes. It will be interesting to see how these technologies become more or less involved during the rest of the year. And because I've included an Office reference in nearly all of my posts, here you go because...