This is your first year teaching and you've worked all week long on the perfect presentation: You found an inspirational, yet informative, video on YouTube, your PowerPoint presentation is absolutely beautiful, and you finally figured out how to utilize the SmartBoard and all its functions.
Today is the day of your presentation and you couldn't be any more excited. You get to class early with just enough time to prepare for your oh, so wonderful lesson. The adrenaline courses through your veins as you walk up to the podium and begin to set up. Your students start to file into the classroom-- some groggy with a Case of the Mondays, some eager to learn, and others indifferent--yet you greet them all with a cheery smile. The second bell rings as you hit the "power" button..
Nothing happens.
Taking a deep breath, you hit the "power" button a second time with just a little more force. Nothing. You can feel your control of the classroom start to slip through your fingertips as you once again hit the "power" button...
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This is the kind of situation we've seen being played out over and over again, mostly amongst our classmates. But these are the classmates who will someday become teachers, just like you and me.
This is the kind of situation that we can also learn a very valuable lesson from: do not become dependent on technology. You can have the most state-of-the-art computers, SmartBoards, and every other new and innovative technology made for the classroom, but we have to remember that these are just tools for learning, NOT the basis of learning. I feel like many of us, especially the younger generations who plan on teaching later in life, have become very dependent on technology and won't know what to do when the technology fails on us. Our first thought it to panic when we should already have a Plan B--or even a Plan C, D, and E.
Although integrating technology in our future classrooms is very important, I think that it is even more important to always, always, ALWAYS have a back-up plan that does not involve having to use any form of tehcnology. Nothing is scarier than the thought of losing control of your future classroom.
This post is great! I think it is amazing when teachers use technology, but they should not become dependent on it. I can think of so many times when I went to my classes, and the professors could not get their laptops to work. They had to call IT, they had to come and try to fix the problem. Most of the time, by the time the professor fixed the situation there was barely any time left in class. Or they would have to cancel class and it was a waste of everyone's time. Rather than rely on technology, teachers should always have a backup just in case something goes wrong.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this topic for several reasons. We were born in an era when technology was really pushing through boundaries. Now in society people who don't have a cell phone are looked at weird. If you don't have a smart phone then you will be considered ancient. When I substitute for class I noticed that students have more advanced phones than I. Its easy for us to rely on technology because it provides us with immediate result. I have yet to hear about a person going to the library to figure out an answer. In relation to the previous statement, people who cannot find an answer will simply "Google it."
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that we always need to have a backup plan when it comes to planning our lessons. This is especially true when it comes to us integrating technology into our lessons. On the other hand, I would not let situations like this discourage me from incorporating technology into my lessons because then I am not creating the best lessons possible. In other words, if I do not use everything I can to make up a great lesson then I am failing my students.
ReplyDeleteThat scenario is definitely horrifying. Without control of your classroom you have lost the privalege of being in command. I agree that you should always have a back up plan when using technology in the classroom. I have attended a class where the overhead projector did not work and the professor dismissed the class since he did not have anything else prepared. This should never be the case in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sean, while the deafening silence of our prefect presentation not working is awful and heart break it shouldn't keep us from involving technology in the classroom. We should always have a back up plan, and or not base our entire day around a technological presentation. Instead, it should be , one song, movie, or clip, but not all of them. So just incase it doesnt work, we could move about our lesson.
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