Reminding Myself of Connections

                Way back in the late 1990s when I was a video production major at Ithaca College, I had to keep up with technology. I didn’t have a choice because technology was such a large part of my major. I loved it and relished my educational luck. We had a cutting edge communications school that had all the cool new gear for audio, video, and film production, new broadcast technologies and awesome access to the newest computers for print and online news reporting too.  We were among the first schools to get digital editing computers and software. My class was even the first to get our own Ithaca College email addresses (that shows you how long ago I entered college!!!).  It was big deal that one of my roommates had her own computer. We still had to trudge through the snow and ice to print our papers on the dot matrix printers, but the technology that was available to me through school was amazing. Few of my counterparts at any other school in the country, save Emerson College or UCLA had the opportunities that I did; I was well aware of my fortune.

So, upon reflection of this excitement, it strikes me as very strange that when I became a teacher I stepped so far back from my love of all things techie.  When I went back to school to become a teacher I was encouraged to teach the “old fashioned” way- pick up a book, read, discuss, write.  I stopped thinking about all the cool things that technology could help me with as a teacher and the excitement that it engenders in young learners. I forgot, for awhile, how excited I was to have the opportunity to work with all the new equipment and software at Ithaca and it took me awhile to make the connection between my excitement for learning way back then and the excitement I could foster in my own students.

The more I learn about the technologies that are available to us, and how we can use them in the classroom, the more I love it!  Always adverse to cell phones in the classroom, this year I rethought my draconian response to seeing a phone in my room. On a whim, when I was frustrated and desperate for a jump starting student enthusiasm, I let my juniors write open responses on whatever device they had with them at the moment: IPad, smart phone, IPod, laptop, etc.  I just decided that I wanted to see what my students would do with the rare opportunity to use electronic devices with impunity: how they would behave and respond and if they would focus on their assignment. I was amazed at what they wrote in thirty minutes. Some students who never turned in any work were focused, writing and turned in their papers on time.  I had 100% participation. Who gets that result in a mid-level English class when the assignment requires writing? No one!! They were so excited to try something new with their devices that they didn’t mind the writing. This was a breakthrough moment for me. I realized that I had to find new ways to engage them and that the technology that I was fighting against was exactly was I so excited about fifteen years ago.  So, in my constant quest to improve student learning and my own teaching I constantly have to remind myself of this excitement and embrace the awesome technology to which we have access.