Out of my comfort zone:

My use of technology has not necessarily advanced or changed for the last few years. My computers in education course was somewhat interesting, pretty fun, but over all, I didn't find what I learned there very compelling. I didn't get a sense that, "wow, technology is a vital part of education," or that technology could somehow enhance the learning process. I saw tech in ed as more of an obligation. Like, "everyone uses computers... they are a pain in the butt. I should probably incorporate them in a few assignments to encourage use of technology, because students will need to know how to use technology... " Is anyone out there snoring yet?

I joined this teaching Lit for adolecents class, and the very first day I felt like I had been hit with a ton of bricks. I wrote my first post on this blog, having no idea what I wanted to talk about in all actuality. I subscribed to the Grand Rapids Press, and the education sections of the New York Times and the Washington Post. I also subscribed to learning.com from PBS's websight, and a book review provider called Powell's Books. As I started reading articles through my RSS feed, I was surprised and a little irritated that the articles I found most interesting were about technology in education. I was fighting the tech in ed blog with all my might, but it just was not happening. Then as my class was under way, my professor started giving suggestions for using technology to spike student's interests in literacy and in literature. At first I had my psychology of education teacher in the back of my head nagging, "educators get so excited about technology being the golden ticket to better education, but when we look at the research, it just doesn't actually help anything."

In spite of the nagging voice in my head, I was approached by continuous examples of technology in literature classes simply being a way to reach this generation. Class lectures, activities and the news articles I was reading combined to help me realize that technology is not something I am obligated to associate with education in order to prepare youth to use computers. Youth are already using computers. Some of them don't really open up in any other way. I am the one with the huge obligation to wake up, catch up, and adapt myself to who students are today, and what they need education to be in order to relate to them.

I've started changing some of my subscriptions. I dropped the Grand Rapids Press for instance, and I've subscribed to more tech in ed specific blogs. I'm really ecited about a blog I found today called 2 cents worth. The author, david warlick has a lot of interesting entries regarding tech in ed, and aparently is quite an advocate and guest speaker.

The purpose of this blog, now more clearly stated, will be to explore uses of technology that are written up in the news as being helpful, maybe even some that are not so helpful. I'm interested in articles about how teachers are using tech in ed to reach their students, how tech in ed is causing controversy, being abused, not used enough etc. Consider this blog a very exploritory cite of tech in ed, seeing how this is not my usual territory, but I have a curriosity about it and I realize it is something we all need.