How will technology change my future classroom? What will learning look like there?
I have been away from public school for eighteen years. When I decided to be a teacher, I thought I would be teaching in the ways I was taught. I pictured adding in some technology to supplement, or as the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of actual learning go down. I saw myself standing at the front of a room of teenagers, lecturing about science while they took bored notes. Sometimes that sounded depressing, but I wanted to be a good teacher and help my future students to love science as I do, so I was willing to try.
I am so excited to learn about all they ways teachers are using technology to help their students learn. My students will know computers like fish know water. It will be my job to figure out how to use their interest and skills to help them be functional digital global citizens. In my observations this semester, I have seen a teacher use project-based, computer-oriented tasks to teach biology. He and his class were filled with enthusiasm and it was contagious.
Here's a list of things I want to see in my classroom:
collaboration
enthusiasm
curiousity
wonder
discovery
difficult questions
creativity
energy
Things I want less of in my classroom:
lecture
sitting still
boredom
memorization
I am learning how to implement technology to further these goals. I think part of the appeal of technology is how personalized the experience can be. This is also an excellent aim for education. I want to use computers and smartboards and the internet and ipads and every other tool in my arsenal to present science in ways that are memorable and exciting to students. I can use the internet to learn from and collaborate with other educators who feel the same way.
