Teaching with Technology

Lynn Barnsback

I saw a teen use white out today on a receipt- he said it was a great product but can’t believe what we used to do with it. (“How hard was it to do a paper back then?”) The orthodontist uses a date book for appointments. My 80 year old aunt in Arizona sends me newspaper clippings in the mail. I just sent a video of the “snowmagedden” to all my face book friends. I will send the aunt photos of the snow. I still write and send almost 100 Christmas letter and photos. The Boy Scout den leader still calls with updates, even though we e-mail too.

It’s a hybrid world out there where we use technology, don’t use technology and use it in different ways than it was intended. I am not a native in this world, but I live there now. I also work with the “old ways” with the aunt and the receptionist, and that Christmas letter I will not let go of. This seems to give new meaning to the phrase “Sandwich Generation”. I am finding my way with the technologies my “communities” use most often. I am not a willing participant. Necessity makes me join, I want to see the party photos (face book), receive the information about the class party (e-mail), hear about the early school closing while away from home (twitter) or complete my class assignment (blog). While I could not conceive of functioning without e-mail (“How hard was it to organize a volunteer committee without it?” Phone chain anyone?) this technology will pass my students/children by. They will probably adapt/adopt something else to fill the need. 

That is the point for me. People always made due and find ways to fill the need. We do not however need to do all of it all the time. In order for technology to “be our friend” it must fit into our lives, and into our classrooms. This is where I get worried about what I referred to in our first class as “Gratuitous Technology”, using the technology for its own sake. The video in JohnD’s  Synthesis Exercise” highlights this in a humorous manner. What do we use and how do we use it so it makes sense? If we put the cart before the horse and have the technology drive the lessons then the lessons are lost. Students are in our classes primarily to learn the subject, ideally with the assistance of technology. We also need to keep in mind that technology changes rapidly, and we do not want our lessons to become obsolete simply because the technology has. The adaptation of our subjects to be enhanced by the use of technology, this appears to me to be the goal. Different departments, levels of courses and professors will integrate at different rates with various media products, hopefully that will meet their particular needs. Students will drive some of these needs. We will make mistakes.

As a ‘sandwich generation” we are extraordinarily equipped to grasp the potential uses of the “new” media’s to enhance the traditional methods of teaching. Of course this is a moment in time when this is our reality. There will come a time sooner than we probably like to acknowledge when the professors will not be familiar with the use of white out as an aid in writing a paper. They will never have owned a typewriter, and these “natives” will be running our schools. Hopefully they can draw some inspiration from their college days when technology was integrated in an intelligent manner and the bedrock lessons of higher education were taught with knowledge, passion and integrity. (By people who still send Christmas Letters.)