Will Richardon's Blog

I found it interesting that the students only discussed technology in one of their grad classes.

The reason for this: Besides 307, the topic of technology has never been brought up in any of my classes and I am taking 16 credits. I am in the process of reading chapter six in Friedman and there was so much detail about how the world is working with technology in chapter five, that I was really shocked when I realized that no other professors or students have brought up technology in class.

I am still trying to adjust to what technology tools can be used in a classroom and how to incorporate it into a lesson, so for example, when I think of an American Lit. class I took last semester, I now realize how many different activities could have been done with the help of technology. Granted I loved the class, there were times it was very boring because while we all sat there, the professor read and we chimed in every once in awhile, needless to say it was the same students talking every time.

At this point of my 307 education, I know that the class could have done what is called Discourse Mapping that I learned about at the DATE conference, we could have had a class blog where we discussed characters, writing styles, etc about the readings, we could have made pod-casts, a web site, a class wiki, etc. I really think the class would have enjoyed the literature more and would have appreciated it if the class were organized in a different manner.

Like I said before, I am not suprised that the source of technology was only metioned in one class. The question now is, why only in one class? Why aren't teachers integrating or at least communicating about technology to their students? I think Will is right when he said it may have to do with the older generations not wanting to be bothered with it. In a sense I don't want to be bothered with it either, but I will be using it because this is a new way of learning and I am growing up with it.