A Card Catalog??... Our Students Really Do Have the World at their Fingertips! We MUST adjust!!

What a great course this has been! Not only has this course helped me and my students directly, but my colleagues have been effected by the course and my GAME plan. Although I have not completed my GAME plan (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009) , I have made huge gains and more importantly I developed a schedule to follow through on my plan and to use when developing other plans.

I have come out of this class with activities that I created but also many that I have “stolen” from my classmates. I really have had some great groups to work with and I believe I have accumulated some great plans to use directly or as ideas to send me in the right direction.

The key to being successful though is to start small. We need to remember to support each other and make reasonable goals we can be accountable for. Just as we would not expect our students to jump right into multilevel projects without support, teachers should not be expected to do this when incorporating technology. Teachers should however, be required to make an effort and using the GAME plan (Cennamo, et.al, 2009) makes this much more attainable.

Throughout this course I have been reminded that technology can be infused into all subject areas. To often mathematics teachers try to remove any guilt they have about not incorporating technology or other great learning tools because the content is too straight forward and needs to be demonstrated and practiced as it “always” has. We have proven that to be completely false and have learned many great activities and ideas to use specifically in math. It is important for teachers to remember to share and to keep an open mind and most importantly, teachers need to be confident enough to ask for assistance when learning new technologies.

I shared this story within the discussion groups but must repeat it again. My first grade daughter just spoke with an expert on Sea Turtles in California while her class sat comfortably in their South Carolina classroom. Her teacher, a self proclaimed novice with technology, sent a clip of this to the parents via email. We all sat and watched the clip in amazement and were shocked and excited for our children. Our children on the other hand treated it like no big deal – the truth is it really was NO BIG DEAL!

Technology has made these types of activities easy, affordable and efficient. Educators need to catch up and use this technology on a regular basis because the children just expect it. AS I read one of those feel good emails explaining the differences between children of today and the children of 1980, I had to laugh when they commented on televisions with dials and no remotes, phones with busy signals and no caller ID, and email and texting replacing the postal service “snail mail”. Just as our generation did not understand having to walk 5 miles to school, up hill, both ways in the snow, this generation has no clue that a search about past American presidents involved a trip to the library, a card catalog, several large references books that you could not take home and lots and lots of note cards. Our students can research information about any country’s past presidents in seconds and even take virtual tours of the grounds they walked.

Teachers do not have to bring the students the information any more, students have the information and can get it instantly! Our job is to assist with the gathering, screening, editing and presenting of the information to help our students learn how to learn and discover on their own as self directed learners (Cennamo, et.al, 2009). Technology in the classroom is imperative for our students because they are connected to this world outside of the classroom and they need to understand and know how to interact with it!

Good luck to everyone, this has been a great journey with you and I wish you all the best!

References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning