21st Century Students, 20th Century Teachers.

We live in a technology rich age, where our students have been introduced to and grown up on chat groups like MySpace, and Facebook, Ipods, play lists, last but not least online multi player video games. They are more comfortable with texting and cell phones than they are with pen and paper. As a matter of fact they are even more adept with the new technology tools that we the teachers are.

I am happy to see that there are websites where teachers can go like wikispaces.com which provides a visual editor that gives you the basics about starting your own wiki space. If teachers are to guide their students into safe practices on the web and continue to enlarge on the new brain wave patterns that the use of technology has opened up, we need to know what they know and more. I am sure that the developers of technology had no idea that what they developed would be the sensation it is or the many ways that it would be used.

It is unfortunate that some of our teachers are too apprehensive of technology, and are insecure about their lack of knowledge when it come to technology. They may be even insecure about allowing their class to be technology driven, as this takes the reins out of their hands, and instead of leading they become followers or simply guides no longer the supreme depository of all knowledge(Richardson, 2009) . I think some teachers are afraid of this.

However when we think of the work place in today's world and how technology is used there, we are placing our students at a disadvantage when we do not do whatever we can to learn and apply technology in our classrooms.

I like what Bob Lenz says in his blog How to go Global in your classroom, " Given the level of technical sophistication of today's student's, why not use technology to extend the classroom and collaborate globally." While professor Barbara Ganley wonders how teachers can expect students to blog if they have no idea how to blog themselves, and experience the impact it has on their thinking, researching and creativity.

Having said all of this what are your plans for the summer? Mine are to do the usual around the house but I am definitely going to research how I can increase the use of technology in my classes and plan some creative lessons for the fall. What about you?

References

Richardson, W.(2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and Other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

Lenz, Bob (Blog page). http://www.edutopia.org/technology-global-classroom#comment-63216