Entering the Realm of the Keyboard Warrior

There is one universal truth regarding human beings and fear, and it is that no matter how much a person has experienced, there is always a fear of what is new. It's the same fear we had about the dark when we were young. It's the same fear we experience when traveling to a foreign country, eating at a different restaurant, or being taken into the back room during an airport security check. We fear these things because of the uncertainty that lays before us. There is nothing that says this new "thing" we are getting ourselves into is bad. There is nothing to prove that the new "thing" will be difficult. However, all humans are afraid of their potential for failure and hardship when attempting something new. This is my fear with integrating technology into my classroom.

Of course, as a student sitting in the middle/back of the classroom, as a younger man I always laughed at the teachers who couldn't figure out how to work their dvd players (God forbid if it was a VCR). Now, seating myself on the other side of the teacher's desk, I find it increasingly frightening that I am likely to be the same individual I used to scoff at. While I'm perfectly capable of using a VCR or dvd player, the technological gaps between 2003-present have been so significant that it's safe to say I've fallen off the map (or GPS if you're connected to tech).

My experience with technology in the classroom is fairly limited. I've briefly flirted with using powerpoint presentations, and I believe that they are effective so long as you don't use them as often as you use a cell phone to make a call. Like any other activity, students can get incredibly bored at viewing powerpoint presentations. When you consider the low lights, tv screen, and one or two people briefing the presentation, a lecture can be as sleep inducing as a sedative with Yanni playing in the background.

I've also used Youtube videos in some of my classes in order to give the students a chance to interact with their subject of material in a form that they can readily understand and identify with. I've used commercial clips for XBOX games to explain poetry and it's practical use, I've used Family Guy clips to explain concepts of poetry, song, and performance to a piece of writing, and I've shown music videos of the same song to explain perspective from one person to another. I found all of these methods effective. However, I do believe that I should make these activities more interactive so I am letting my students explore rather than be lead by me.

Finally, I've hooked up my laptop to a projection screen in order to show students how to write paragraphs properly, and to give final directions on assignments. This proved effective, as students could physically see the changes I would make on a paper, so they would recognize what to look for in their own writing. As for using the projection screen for giving out directives, students did respond to the screen easier than they did to the white board. I'm not sure why, but perhaps it's something more familiar to them and what they see at home.

My desire in entering this class is becoming, at least, as efficient in using technology in the classroom as my students are. While the teaching profession had been tech-proof for, probably, the last 50 years, now the profession relies on technology more each passing week. Teachers now have the fear of being left behind in an age of innovation that is constantly evolving around them. If students are more in touch with technology, there will come a point where the students will not need teachers.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement. Students will always need teachers to explain the proper usage of information technology. However, with proper instruction, students will rely on their teachers less and less in order to discover the information that they need to know.

For instance, last semester I taught my grade 9 humanities classes how to write business letters. This was a part of the grade 9 LA curriculum as set out by Alberta Education. Just for fun, I googled different types of business letters and found a plethora of business letters that could be in all types of format. While it was my job to teach a specific business letter to my students, it came to my attention that if a student wanted to type up a business letter for their own purposes, they hardly needed me to show them how.

For my purposes, the same could be said for essay writing. There are so many sites that explain how to write an essay and all of it's component parts that a teacher is only there to hone the skill of writing. The steps are already all over the internet.

I guess, in this long and drawn out blog, I'm trying to say that I want to become on the same level of technological understand as my students so I can usher them in to the modern age with a respect for information and the potential it gives to all of us.