Back to school

It's like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure without the phone booth! One minute I was wearing a cap and gown getting my diploma and the next I was back in school again!

I am enrolled at Walden U working towards my masters in ED. The focus? Integrating technology in the classroom of course! I am currently enrolled in the first of the core content classes and learning a lot about what is on the cutting edge today.

It is very validating to discover that many of the things I've been doing with technology in the classroom fit in very well with the new pedagogical ideas that are emerging from the technology enabled 21st century classroom. It is also exciting to see all of the tools that are available now or are emerging as the web 2.0 continues to develop.

I think the most valuable aspect of integrating technology into the classroom is the way it encourages and facilitates collaboration and co-teaching between educators and students. Ideally it also creates an environment of collaboration and sharing among teachers as well, unfortunately some "old school" teachers are resistant to new ideas and view 21st century learning tools as a fad or as toys.

To those teachers I respectfully submit that using new methods and technology to improve teaching is a centuries old trend. The Socratic method of teaching was a giant advance in pedagogy. Then there was the invention of the blackboard which perhaps the first big step in collaboration, allowing whole groups of students to collaborate at once. Even the venerable overhead projector heralded a new era of teacher student interaction and by the way time savings as materials were re-usable from year to year.

I suppose I should count myself as fortunate to be accepting of new technology. If I had been born just a few years earlier I would have missed out on being in the first generation of children to be in the formative years when digital technology took off like a rocket. (I'm proud to be in the generation that had to set the clock on the VCR for all of the adults who found the whole thing mystifying!)

I have spent considerably time reflecting on my interactions with veteran teachers who clearly are not and are not going to be on board with the 21st century learning environment. My initial reaction is that many of them need to exit the profession before their distain for change eclipses the many successful years of teaching they may have had, making them angry and potentially crabby. The second thing that comes to mind when I consider them more deeply is that it is a real shame that they are not more open to changes because theier teaching experience is not made obsolete by technology, quite to the contrary. The technology they reject provides a platform from which they could share their experience and knowledge with a larger potentially world wide audience.

It is a shame really because the ability to adopt and utilize new technology has always has always only required one key thing... having an open mind. Every new thing that we encounter whether it is another human being or a new gizmo; requires our spending time with that thing to become comfortable and figure out how it works. The first step though is having an open mind about it so we can be at ease and comfortable moving forward.

David Crouse