While I was in the middle of the ever-so-engaging-and-fascinating scanning process (put papers in tray type in document name backspace because copier keyboard sucks hit send clear paper jam in document feeder swear repeat 37 more times), I started reflecting on what I used to do with those documents--and how much my teaching has changed in two short years. All because of thirty small black rectangles on a cart sitting in my room.
So exactly how have those black rectangles changed me and my teaching? Here's how:
- When someone hands me something on paper, I stare at it for a second, wondering what to do with it. I then lay it on my desk, where it is promptly eaten by said desk, never to be seen again. I just don't do well with paper since I released all of my 3-ring binders back into the wild 2 years ago.
- My students' learning is no longer partially determined by what I can get printed in the copy room before class starts.
- Differentiating for individual student needs is so much easier with my black rectangles. There's something to meet everyone's learning needs in the magical land of the internet. In other words, conditions for learning are much easier to set up for all my little and not-so-little learners.
- It has allowed me to shift further towards a constructivist teaching philosophy. There's not really a need for me to be a walking talking information transmitter when students can read and create their own meaning using the web and its free tools.
- I am no longer bound by the limitations of a textbook. For example, if we need to know something for a PBL problem--no matter if its a local city ordinance are or how the electron transport chain makes ATP, we can immediately start researching, sifting through current research and information. Our knowledge needs are immediately gratified at the start of a good Google search.
- I have learned more about how computers work than I ever thought I would ever know. Not nearly as much as my technology-director husband or my Cisco TelePresence engineer sister know, but learning the basic assumptions and premises of computer operation has helped me teach students how to troubleshoot problems with their own machines.
- (Edited to add this. Don't you hate it when you think of things after you write a post?) I no longer need to be in the room for learning to happen. I just need to set up the right steps for learning to happen for each of my learners.
- I have become so accustomed to technology being an integrated and normal part of the learning process that I sometimes forget that other teachers do not have access to the same resources I do. That is something on which I need to work.