When I was in college, we took a Technology in Education class. It was a well-thought out class, with clear goals and reasonable assignments.
We learned to:
-Make spreadsheets, and turn them into graphs.
-Download programs.
-Edit videos.
-Create posters in Photoshop.
And now that I'm a teacher, I find that I have very little need for most of these skills. I'm not knocking them. They're good skills, and for a college with a ton of money and computers, they're great.
In the real world, I use my old Frankensteined overhead projector more than anything else. Not because I can't have a smart-board, or projector. I have a projector. But if I use it, I have to dedicate a laptop to it, and I don't want to give mine up for the job. I could have a smart-board, but I'd have to take everything I have physical copies of, and scan them all. And one cannot simply Xerox a handout into a presentation.
Also, I find that scissors are my number one friend. I find myself cutting things out far more than I ever thought would be necessary. Right now, it's 1,200 paper hearts, for the senior cookie-gram. I'm getting that divot in my thumb again.
And no Excel document will ever beat out my paper gradebook. Partially because the gradebook is more portable, and I can write notes on it, and I can physically stick a sticky-note on it to remind me of something, and I can tuck a student essay between the pages for looking at later.
I love my classroom, and the things I have. As far as schools go, this one is very high-tech, and very affluent. I just would have liked to have figured out how to write on an overhead projector before my first day of school. My teachers always made it look so easy. . .
Epbot Is Changing: It's Time To PIVOT
1 year ago
It is easy to write on an overhead. I only miss it...never. Well, that isn't true. It takes me 4 copies of the same documetn if I want to write on it to go under the Elmo instead of one transparency (sp?) written in marker and written on top of with Vis a Vis. I love my Elmo though, and will never go back. This may limit the schools I can apply to if I ever leave Maple Valley...
ReplyDeleteMy technology in education class consisted of learning how to run a mimeograph machine, the machine that adhered two pieces of paper together with a film between them by use of pressure and heat--yeah, never saw one of those again, the big machine that made things appear in any size you wanted on the wall (I used to know the name of that one. I have a small one.), and we must have had overhead projectors, but I don't remember them. Computers and videos in the school? That was the stuff of science fiction.
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