Since there was no required reading assigned for Unit 1, I have decided to reflect upon my personal journey with technology throughout my educational career for my first blog entry.
The first time that I can remember using a computer during my school years was in 6th grade. That was the year that I entered middle school and had to take a typing class. Basically, all we learned was the layout of a keyboard, "remember to keep your fingers on the home row," and constantly typed words and sentences in order to see how many words we could type per minute.
In 8th grade, I became editor of the middle school newspaper and had to learn how to use a computer in order to configure the layout of the paper each month. At this time, I can remember my English teacher lugging in a large computer that he purchased with his own money so that we could use it for newspaper. Even at this point (1996), the school district that I attended did not have a computer in every room.
When I entered high school, there was finally a computer in every room. Still, our essays were not required to be typed and computer labs were not available for our use. It was during my 9th grade year that my middle sister started graduate school. I remember having a word processor at home and thought it was the greatest thing! It wasn't until 10th grade that I had another computer course where I learned to save documents to a disc in 1998. During my last few years of high school, my school actually had three classrooms that had a computer at every station. However, two of these classrooms held business courses and the other was a math classroom.
In 1998, my parents bought their first computer. I learned how to navigate the Internet by trial and error. We thought it was a major accomplishment when we were able to set up an e-mail account! IM became my best friend and caused me to stay up late talking with friends. There was also a chat room named mIRC that my friends and I used to have "group" discussions.
In 2000, I entered college. I thought I was really cutting-edge as I purchased a laptop to take with me. The only problem was that I only knew how to use Word, e-mail, and chat on IM. Beyond that, I was clueless!
What am I getting at? Even though many people would consider me to be a part of the "younger" generation, I do not consider myself a digital native. It wasn't until I started teaching in 2004, that I learned how to use PowerPoint because my students wanted to submit projects this way! Now, in 2009, many hours of my week are filled by constantly checking Facebook, logging in to my online courses, searching the Internet to meet my information needs, blogging about my son as he grows, and working as an Independent Longaberger consultant by submitting all orders online. While I still do not consider myself a digital native, I do consider myself to be much more technological savvy than I was ten years ago. For me, learning technology as it evolves will be a lifelong process.
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Facebook and Educators
Other assignments for this week included signing up for a Facebook account and Listserv. I decided to subscribe to eSchool News. Interestingly, there was an article available regarding educators and librarians with Facebook accounts entitled “School Librarians Lead Social Networking Pack Among Educators. The article discusses a survey that was conducted among librarians, educators, and principals regarding their attitudes toward social networking sites. A significance difference was found with “70 percent of media specialists, 62 percent of teachers, and 54 percent of administrators saying they’ve joined a social network” (Lau Whelan, 2009, p.1) The article goes on to discuss that librarians are “are most positive about the value of social networking in education, but they’re frustrated with their school districts blocking access to Web sites like YouTube and Facebook” (Lau Whelan, 2009, p.1).
The articles continues and discusses the fact that educators do see the importance of technology and social networking sites, like Facebook, but continue to stand on the side of caution as they believe student should know the difference between personal and professional/educational communications. Librarians, on the other hand, see technology and social networking sites as something that students are using every day. Therefore, their belief is that we should find ways to incorporate these new technologies into the classroom in order to get students interested in content.
I have to agree with the librarians surveyed in this article regarding the heavy restrictions imposed by school district to certain technologies and websites. There are so many valuable clips available on YouTube that correspond to many English lessons that I teach, yet my school district restricts access to this site. Perhaps a certain type of filter would be more appropriate instead of outright restriction. Regardless of what type of policies school districts have in place, I believe they need to re-evaluated due to the fact that we are teaching “digital natives” and we need to be utilizing all available resources to enhance instruction and learning.
In addition, I believe that it is our responsibility to provide guidelines for technology use, in general, in school environments. After all, “educating students about Facebook is our priority now” (Lupsa, 2006, p. 1). We push for sex education, alternative teachings to creation in science, the right to read banned books, etc. Why should we not take the responsibility of properly training our students how to use technology and social networking sites so they know how to approach them in their future endeavors?
Lau Whelan, D. (2009, November 9). School librarians lead the social networking pack among educators. School Library Journal. Retrieved November 10, 2009, from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6705646.html
Lupsa, C. (2006, December 13). Facebook: a campus fad becomes a campus fact. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved November 10, 2009, from http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1213/p13s01-legn.html?s=hns
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