Technology is Powerful
For instruction, there is no question that technology must be harnessed for its powerful extensions of traditional teaching methodology. Why write on the blackboard when you can present digital slides with supporting graphics, animations, and video to your text? Your presentation can be resorted, recalled, and revised at will, allowing you to navigate around your information based on student response to the presentation, rather than the other way around. Ditch the dittos, and make electronic versions of your teaching materials. This will provide accessibility, search, retrieval, and scalability for different learning levels.Teachers should also harness the standards-rich exercises provided by electronic document sharing and messaging. Students will take a greater interest in writing reflections and observations when they are read and discussed by their peers. Teachers get to lead memorable dialogues about subject matter instead of forgettable lectures.
Technology is a Part of Our and Our Children's Lives
Movies and video games are not dirty words. They are enjoyed by adults and children alike. Far from being removed experiences, entertainment media is responsible for many of our shared cultural and conceptual ideas, and are deeply woven into our collective consciousness, like it or not. Most children are very 'literate' when it comes to popular culture. Why not use that foundation as a point of reference to teach literary themes, history, or civics? Using entertainment genres allows for a way in to introduce curricular content, and creates durable connections to the information.
So what about the concerns we're dumbing down content for entertainment value, or that mediated experiences are delivered at the expense of so-called traditional literacy? This is a valid concern. We must always take care to evaluate the media, games (yes, games), and electronic resources we purchase and make available. However, I do not think it is any more challenging than evaluating a textbook, workbook, or other classic 'filmstrip.' We apply the standards and ask, "what is the understanding this resource will provide?" I believe the challenge lies in evaluating the volume of available content that comes to market year after year. Fortunately there is a technological solution- the networked community of teachers. The load of this daunting task can be shared, publishing our insights, so teachers and administrators can make informed decisions about electronic resources.We are forced to contend with the fact that technology and media are a part of the lives of children, all begging for their attention (and their parent's wallets). The upside, is that it gives us a powerful launching point for developing traditional literacy. If we can provide an interface for learning that matches tools they already use, offer on-demand access to educational media, and a provide a dedicated social network for learning, we can deliver our standards-based curriculum in a scalable, asymmetrical, and engaging way, modeled on the real-world environment of electronic communication.