Okay, so the fact that I'm a student teacher two days a week with a mentor teacher doing most of the teaching should be the first indicator that my experiences so far don't represent how things will be in the future. But it's a good place to start. Having spent so many weeks exploring ways to incorporate new technologies into classroom instruction hasn't really changed my mind about the essence of teaching, that it's really about the interaction between the student, the teacher, and the content. With or without twitter, that reality is constant and it should be a comfort to us all. Perhaps when I'm a full-time teacher in my own classroom, I'll view technology as something more than just a nice bonus because I'll have total control over how to best use it. But for now, the best thing, by far, about technology and teaching is the sheer volume of INCREDIBLE resources available online for teachers to steal. And I mean steal in the legal sense! Part of me is skeptical about the purpose of designing anything from scratch anymore. Everything has already been done and it's likely been done by someone far smarter and more experienced than me. Why create a brand new worksheet on Jacksonian Democracy when the National Endowment for the Humanities has an entire site devoted to lesson plans and classroom materials on the subject? What's the purpose of developing assessments from beginning to end when countless sites make countless examples available for anyone to use? Why not take what's already out there (and what has been shown to work) and modify it for your own purposes?
Being a new teacher, I think I can safely speak for many of us that the biggest concern I have relates to content mastery. My mentor said that it can easily take five years or so before you really feel comfortable that you "know" your stuff and can teach it without studying too much beforehand. Five years is a long time! Planning lessons and units is really challenging and I don't think that I would have been able to produce the level of quality that I want without the help of all these online resources for teachers. No one wants to rely on the textbook all the time. Now I can go to one of any number of great sites to find specific information that I need about a specific event or concept or person. For learning the content, there's nothing better than having web access. Now, I don't suggest that everything out there is reliable. Of course not! As a history person, I had better not depend on resources that I tell my students to back away from slowly. But in a pinch, you can almost always find what you're looking for. And if you're developing something more indepth, it's absolutely invaluable.
I do love technology. But so far I love it behind the scenes!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
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Something I've learned: as much as it stinks not to know something, it's always better to own up to it (especially if you're in front of your students)--> we can model to our students HOW to fill in the gaps of our own understandings (maybe with or without technology) (haha unfortunately learned from experience the hard way).
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I don't think the point of all the tech is to take away from the all important student/teacher/content trinity. What it attempts to address is that educators have fallen behind on creative ways to transmit that all important content in a way relative to the students' lives.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Stella! While I am not actively trying to implement technology into my classroom, I find myself relying on it in ways I never imagined! Like you, I am constantly checking up on potential lessons plans online and looking to veteran teachers for suggestions. You are absolutely right - if someone has a great lesson plan already, that you think is just perfect, why change it? If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Also, I share the same concerns/apprehensions about content mastery...I am just so afraid there is so much that I don't know. However, I think Jenny is dead on, and that it will take a few years...I am anticipating it, however, I can't help but feel unprepared! I feel ya!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that technology is an added bonus that can not take the place of personal interaction. I am truly amazed at how many resources are available on the web. I would not have known that there was so much out there if it had not been for our Ed Tech course. For example, the database that I selected my tools for the webinar is a online library with over 100 tools for math teachers!
ReplyDeleteI also agree that mastery of content is important to feeling comfortable as a teacher. My mentor says that a teacher is not able to put the right amount of attention on asking the right questions unless he or she "owns the material." Some teachers even take refresher courses at community colleges to stay on top of their subject. I'm sure there are online tools that can replace a course!
Stella, I'm confident that you'll bring ample creativity and originality to your teaching, even in your early days of student teaching, and I want to encourage the perspective that you articulate here. Take everything that your mentor (and your departmental colleagues) are willing to share. I would even suggest taking a slightly different perspective. If creating everything from scratch becomes your measure for the quality of your teaching, you run the risk of not serving your students well, because you're too frayed to be there for them as you would otherwise want to be. I've seen a lot of creative, energetic MACers exhaust themselves trying to creative everything from scratch, and it can be rooted in a sort of hubris that doesn't wind up serving anyone as well as it might. You want to "be there" as fully as you can be for your student teaching. Cut yourself a little slack on the curriculum design, and save some energy for all the other stuff...and there'll be lots of it ;-)
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