What+have+I+learned?...

In all this experimenting and trying out new things on the computer at home and at school, I have learned a fair bit about teaching and learning, certainly about technology, and a few things about myself. Let me start with the easiest to describe, technology.

The learning I have done since entering LTT reaffirms what I have long believed about technology, and that is that its greatest value for me is in enhancing communication between people, on both macro and micro scales. I have reconnected with old friends (I mean friends from 40 years ago) in Europe and Central America with the help of email and the web. It allows me to send not only messages to these people, but photos, music, and anything else that the internet will transmit. The value of being able to send a video of my family, a Powerpoint slide show, etc. and our greetings to people I haven't seen in 40 years is immeasurable. The ability to send a message or other digital information to one person down the hall or all the staff in my school or my school district while sitting at my desk is something that twenty or thirty years ago was only possible in science fiction comic books.

I have also learned that with all the advantages of technology come many risks and disadvantages. I have to have electrical power running at a pretty constant and dependable voltage to use any electronic device, which depends on power sources, transmission lines, weather, and public infrastructure. If global warming dries up all the rivers in Canada, all our cities that rely on hydro-electric power will have a hard time running their computers. Once I have a dependable source of power, I have to have a machine in which all the wires and circuits are connected properly or I will have an expensive door-stop. The connections between servers, routers, modems, and all the electronic gadgets we use have to be set up properly and be well-matched to each other, or using these tools becomes an immensely frustrating game of "Which button should I push?" or "How long should I wait to see if it will accept my log-on?" Last, but not least, the fact that I can access so many more features of the internet and other software on my home computer than I can in my work environment gives me a kind of "Jekyl and Hyde" persona. 8 years ago, as the computer site contact in one elementary school, I had complete access to anything and everything that the machines in the computer lab could do, and I was learning very quickly how to problem-solve with the MacIntosh platform. Now I can't even set the time delay for my screensaver on my desktop computer in my classroom, due to administrative controls. I find that my inability to change settings to my liking or to download and install free software at school (such as Google Earth) makes me less interested in learning more about how the machine on my desk and the system in our school work and how to problem-solve when things don't work as they're designed to. Very often, the wonderful flexibility and innovation that our technology offers to us as teachers is thwarted by the restrictions placed upon us. Technology can soak up tons of time. I have a hard enough time getting all my marking done without the distraction of techie stuff, so now I have a constant struggle to divide my time adequately between my various duties.

Now to teaching and learning. I am constantly learning new things about teaching, partly because I am a naturally curious person, and partly because I am always looking for short-cuts to some of the very time-consuming tasks of paper-shuffling and marking. Through my efforts in this course, I have learned that even if technology doesn't necessarily cut the time required to prepare lessons and units, it sure makes it more enjoyable. I get quite excited when I find a new website or piece of software that I think will help my students understand a concept or inspire them to think "out-of-the-box". I want to help kids realize that there is more to technology than playing "bang-bang, you're dead" games or racing cars around a "virtual" race track. I want them to give answers other than "I found it on Google" when I asked on which website they found some useful information. I have learned that most students need to be taught the basics of web-browsing and features of word-processing programs. Some have advanced skills, but most do not, certainly at the Grade 4-5 level. We often talk about how to prepare young people for the world they will be living in in 10-20 years, and one of those realities, it seems to me, is that they will need to know more about technology than how to shoot down other spaceships.

About teaching, I need to give students more direction and more limitations when I introduce a new technological lesson. e.g. the wiki stories, so they don't go all over the place.