World Wide What?
A reflection piece by Eric March
I was originally turned on to earning the MSU MAET degree by a friend of mine, who has since gone on and graduated from the course himself. I knew that I wanted to earn a graduate degree, and technology seemed like a natural pathway. I recall that my dad had brought home a personal computer way back in the 80's, when no one else had one at home. I spent a ridiculous amount of time on that dinosaur machine, but it provided so much fun that I was hooked ever since. I remember tooling around on NASA's Gopher site before the World Wide Web even existed. I used to have to call into my dad's employer (a college) so I could surf around, because there really was no such thing as the internet except for educational / government use. So, I'm an old school user. All through college my friends and I graduated toward technology, always enjoying the new things and staying on the cutting edge. I always thought to myself that if my primary career (research) didn't work out, that I would turn to something technological. Well, as it turns out, my original career didn't work out, and I went into teaching.
I was thinking back to my educational experiences, and the thing that really stuck out to me was how bored I was in class a good portion of the time. I told myself that I would always try and be an "engaging" teacher. Naturally, this meant that I would incorporate technology into my lessons. I figured that since the students were so engaged with their technology anyway, I could use that to my advantage. Because I have such an extensive technology background, I was positive that I could make all of my lessons engaging and jammed with technology.
The thing that I have learned over the past few years in the program is that I can't use technology just for technology's sake. It is counterproductive to use a piece of technology when paper and pencil, for example, will be just fine. The problem that occurs is that the students end up focusing on the technology, and not the lessons being taught. Therefore, I now try to incorporate technology that will be useful to the students. If, for example, I'm going to take an hour to make a podcast, and only 2 of my students are going to listen to it, I won't waste my time on it. Perhaps I could use that time to update my Moodle page, something that more of my students will find beneficial. So, basically, I've tried to be more surgical with my use of technology now than I was a few years ago.
I was thinking back to my educational experiences, and the thing that really stuck out to me was how bored I was in class a good portion of the time. I told myself that I would always try and be an "engaging" teacher. Naturally, this meant that I would incorporate technology into my lessons. I figured that since the students were so engaged with their technology anyway, I could use that to my advantage. Because I have such an extensive technology background, I was positive that I could make all of my lessons engaging and jammed with technology.
The thing that I have learned over the past few years in the program is that I can't use technology just for technology's sake. It is counterproductive to use a piece of technology when paper and pencil, for example, will be just fine. The problem that occurs is that the students end up focusing on the technology, and not the lessons being taught. Therefore, I now try to incorporate technology that will be useful to the students. If, for example, I'm going to take an hour to make a podcast, and only 2 of my students are going to listen to it, I won't waste my time on it. Perhaps I could use that time to update my Moodle page, something that more of my students will find beneficial. So, basically, I've tried to be more surgical with my use of technology now than I was a few years ago.