In 1997, I sat in
my education technology class at the University of Oklahoma and received my
first email address. I was sure that I
would never use it outside of the requirements for the class, which also
included laminating and using a projector. Who would ever need email with a fax
machine in every building? 2015 finds me
using a smartboard daily, taking pictures with my cell phone (what?), and
emailing with wild abandon.
Today, technology
touches every aspect of education in our building. Parents can pay their
child’s lunch bill from their office. Students use their phones to store their
scripts for drama class. There are apps
for tuning instruments and Remind for coaches to communicate with athletes and
teachers to communicate with students. We do not check out science textbooks because
students have access to the text online. The need for paper report cards is
gone. It’s all digital and available to parents at all times. Individualized
Education Plans are no longer handwritten in triplicate. They are written and
stored online. Computerized programs like Study Island and Successmaker
individualize instruction for marginal learners and students with disabilities
like never before. Administrators
evaluate teachers on iPads and laptops.
Teachers evaluate students using plickers.
If you can’t take
your class to the computer lab (or the other computer lab), you can check out
the mobile computer lab and bring it to your class. There’s an iPad cart available, smartboards in
every classroom, and apple TVs to be checked out. Students are using
smartphones to keep track of assignments and tablets to read books. Teachers in
my building are using 3D printers and making keyboards out of carrots with
Makey Makeys. Even with all of this technology in our building, the gurus say
we are technologically behind.
John Dewey once
said, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of
tomorrow.” These words are still true
decades later. If we as educators do not stay on the forefront of technology,
we are not able to give our students what they will require to be successful
adults. We need to constantly rethink
professional development for teachers who are not digital natives and don’t
know what they don’t know. We need to consistently and purposefully integrate
technology into our lesson plans instead of adding it in later for the sake of
a TLE score. Peter F. Drucker said we are preparing students “for work that
does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined.” We’re teaching students
who will have careers that we know nothing about.
Students of today
will never experience having to wait on that classmate to finish with the “L”
encyclopedia, so they can start their research. They have access to technology that my 1997
imagination could never have conceived of. This week, a student asked me if I
thought that “smartdesks” had been invented. I told him it was quite likely. Twenty years ago I would have considered it
science fiction. Today, I consider it well within the realm of possibility.