On the Death of My Clicker: A Reflection on Technology and Pedagogy

At the risk of sounding ridiculous...I am grieving a small loss in my life. My faithful clicker that I believe I purchased during my last year teaching middle school science (in 2009) has died. It's a small grief, but I truly am sad about this.

Alas, dear Keyspan...we salute you.

Why grieve this ancient piece of technology? All right, grief might be too strong a word for it. But I did love this tool, and I used it well for a long, long time. The laser pointer still works, but everything else, from the forward and back buttons, to the volume controls, to the mouse buttons...all dead. I changed the batteries, just to be sure. No joy.

The clicker is kaput. A faithful tool that served me well for 13+ years...no more.

Why lament it's passing? Maybe it's just because it's so comfortable to use? Maybe it's just because it's so familiar to use? 

It's funny, the relationship we have with our tools. A quote often attributed to media theorist Marshall McLuhan (but I can't find a source for it?) gets at this: "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." I find this to be true in so many ways. The old saying is that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail, and I think this is often the case with educational technologies as well--the tools we have at our disposal so often shape our thinking about what is pedagogically possible. 

With the death of my clicker, I have found myself much more closely tied to the podiums of the classrooms in which I teach. I don't like this much. I prefer to move around the room, getting a little closer to my students, teaching from the back of the classroom, or the side, or roaming around. The clicker represents some pedagogical freedom for me, I think. It shapes my behavior in the classroom, because it makes different things possible for my use of a slide deck. And without it, I feel more tethered--constrained, even. But notice that I didn't give up my slide decks, just because the tool that gives me more freedom in the classroom geography is finished. The technological ecosystem is disrupted, but not demolished by the removal of one tool from my toolbox. I think this is something worth thinking about.

Every tool has affordances (things it makes possible) and constraints (things it makes difficult.) Perhaps this is why I'm grieving the loss of the clicker a bit...it allowed me to expand the use of other technologies that I like to use when I'm teaching. The clicker's affordances expanded a few things for me, and made me, I hope, a bit more effective in my lecturing.

So, here's to the Keyspan, which served me well for so long! Rest in peace (or is that "rest in pieces?")

Ah, and...of course...I ordered a new clicker as a replacement. And this one has rechargeable batteries, and a green laser instead!

Teaching is Not for the Faint of Heart...and HyFlex Teaching in Particular

I saw this tweet this morning, and boy did this resonate... 

I don't think non-teachers understand what teaching remote and in-person simultaneously really entails.

How would you describe it, teacher friends? pic.twitter.com/yFRSAUTJxg

— Julie Jee 🇰🇷🇺🇲 (@mrsjjee) December 30, 2020

I've said to a few people that this past fall semester was the most demanding for me since my first year of teaching. Most of the challenge was that I have such high expectations for myself and my teaching practice...and I fell short of those expectations. 

A lot.

Here's the thing: the HyFlex model of teaching sounds great in theory. But it's really, really hard to do it well in practice. HyFlex is "hybrid flexible," and the basic idea is that students should be able to fully participate in class whether they attend in person or via distance learning. Early in my doctoral studies, we considered HyFlex as a pedagogical approach in a case study in one of my courses. One of the biggest problems we identified is the huge cognitive demand for instructors using this approach. You have to be able to teach students in the room and students joining via videoconference simultaneously, and either of these modes of teaching is already plenty demanding...let alone simultaneously! 

To do HyFlex teaching well, you basically have two demanding tasks--teaching face-to-face, and teaching via live videoconference. These require similar skillsets...but not identical skillsets. And the difficulty is that you have to do them both at the same time. It's a problem! And, I think that's why I felt like I was failing almost all of the time this fall: I couldn't focus on my normal face-to-face pedagogy, because I was constantly distracted by trying to keep my Zooming students involved in what was happening in class. But the Zoomers were always the minority (just my students who were in quarantine, most of the time) and if I focused on good distance pedagogy, everything felt lifeless in the room, where the majority of my students were. And here was the most-likely-to-fail point for me: I couldn't do either of these things well (or at least, not well enough to meet my own high expectations for my teaching), so I felt a constant sense of frustration that I wasn't doing enough to support at least one group of students' learning. But what made it most difficult for me was that I was also recording each lesson, because some students were not able to join the live class meeting via videoconference, particularly if they were sick. And while teaching is always a public endeavor (you're always doing it in front of someone, right?) having a video record of my work makes me much more self-conscious!

So, to answer the question prompted by the tweet I shared above, here's my best analogy... 

I can yo-yo pretty well. I was a pretty big nerd in middle school, and I yo-yoed a lot. I can do some fun tricks: walk the dog, loop the loop, around the world, and rock the cradle. Not the most impressive repertoire, but a variety of entertaining tools in my yo-yoing toolbox. 

I can also juggle fairly well--with three beanbags, if I have both hands available, or two beanbags, if I have just one hand available. I was still a pretty big nerd in high school, and taught myself to juggle one afternoon, just because I decided I wanted to learn how.

I also can balance a meter stick vertically on my foot for quite a long time. I was able to balance a meter stick on my hand for years and years...and early in my middle school teaching career, I realized I could also balance it on my foot, much to the delight of my students. (Middle school teachers, am I right?) :-)

Now, here's the thing: I think HyFlex teaching is sort of like yo-yoing with my right hand, while juggling two beanbags with my left hand, and balancing a meter stick on my right foot, all at the same time. It's keeping the face-to-face teaching going, while also getting the online teaching going, and then an awareness of the camera, and how this all looks to the students who are watching it after the fact. I might get the yo-yo going (in class students), and keep the beanbags flipping and flopping (Zooming students), but then I'm suddenly derailed by the meter stick dipping--maybe a tech problem with the camera--which has me dropping beanbags, or tangling my yo-yo string.

Ugh. It was an exhausting semester. 

But there were bright spots for me. My students were GREAT throughout--they were very encouraging, despite my feeling that I was failing. My colleagues were amazingly supportive in a "we're all in this together" sort of way. My fully online courses (the ones that were planned to be offered online) went really, really well, which was a buoy for sure.

I think the biggest lesson for me was that I have to be okay with letting "good enough" be "good enough" sometimes when it comes to my teaching practice. (This is HARD for me...) I will do what I can to support and encourage my students' learning, obviously, but I have to check my own expectations for teaching during a pandemic, I think. Sometimes I'm going to drop a beanbag, or get a knot in my yo-yo string, or trip over the meter stick I'm balancing. Who wouldn't flop sometimes, with all of that going on? 

Maybe it's more amazing how often it all worked than the 10% of the time that things went sideways? I guess the real take-away for me is what I always tell my students, future teachers that they are: if you ever stop learning, perhaps it's time to stop teaching?

Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

When Should We Go Digital?

I'm teaching a course this semester ambitiously entitled "Teaching and Learning with Technology." It'a actually the...eighth time I've taught it, and I have it almost dialed in where I want it at this point. (But it's always a process of refinement, you know? Always becoming, and never arriving...)

A perennial question that comes up at some point each time I teach the course is along the lines of, "When should we use technology, and when should we avoid it?"

I love it when students start asking that question. All too often, I think we assume that technology is somehow going automatically improve teaching and learning. But I think that "when should we use technology" might be the wrong question, honestly. Probably this has to do with the fact that I tend to take a very broad view of technology; sure, computers and tablets and projectors are technologies. But so are books, and pencils, and crayons, and paper, and white boards, and scented markers, and play-doh, and protractors, and juggling balls, and...well, you get the idea? We use an awful lot of different kinds of tools to support and encourage students to learn. Some are digital. Some are not.

So the way I'd like to reframe this question is, "When should we go digital?" Here too, there are probably a variety of answers, and it's not always clear.

But tonight I was in on a Twitter chat with one of my all-time favorite groups of Ttweeting teachers, #iaedchat (Iowa Educators Chat--but there's a lot of folks from beyond Iowa who join in.) Tonight's chat centered around this idea of leadership and learning in digitally-enhanced learning environments. As part of the chat, one of my long-time Twitterfriends, Devin Schoening, shared this wisdom:

I've always had 3 Qs I use when working w/teachers re dig tools. 1. Does it make something more efficient? 2. Does it enhance something you are already doing? 3. Does it making something possible that otherwise wouldn't be? Have to be able to answer at least one "yes". #iaedchat

— Devin Schoening (@dschoening) February 24, 2020

I love this! Great advice, Devin. I'm going to pass this along to my students, and hopefully we'll continue to spread this wisdom into lots more schools as well.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Most Effective Educational Technologies

A friend of mine is studying to become a teacher. (But she's not one of my students.) :-)

She reached out to me recently, asking a question for an assignment she's working on for class. She was to reach out to practicing educators to get their input on some issues related to student development, and teaching adolescents. Here's one question this assignment raised:

What technologies are most effective to facilitate learning in adolescents?

Great question there, I think! Probably I love this question because it gets at the intersection between several of my loves in the field of education: educational technologies, teaching adolescents, and effective teaching techniques.

After a little thought, here is how I responded:

Flickering Flickr

In my field of Educational Technology, we sometimes talk about what actually makes a particular tech tool an "educational technology." Some tools are deliberately designed for teaching and learning; I'm thinking about educational software packages for example. Those of a certain age will remember games like "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" or "Number Munchers" or "Reader Rabbit"--all games ostensibly developed to help students learn particular educational content.

But what about a game like "SimCity" or "Civilization" or "Rollercoaster Tycoon?" These weren't really developed to be educational games...but as a games, they definitely have some capability for providing interesting learning opportunities for students. And so there is this tension about educational technologies: sometimes technologies developed for other purposes or contexts are co-opted into becoming educational technologies, because educators find interesting ways to use them for teaching and learning.

Because, if nothing else, great teachers are resourceful, and use the tools they have at their disposal...often in creative ways.

Access Isn't Enough

I just read this piece from Education Week entitled "Data Dive: Devices and Software Flooding into Classrooms." I think that the subtitle on the article is telling: "More access hasn't meant better use."

It's a good piece on the current state of affairs in K-12 schools. Many of devices available for students and teachers. Fast (or at least acceptable) internet access. Lots of technology use, but much of it low-level. Teachers who don't feel adequately prepared for teaching with digital tools and resources.

It's interesting to me how many people seem think that having more access to educational technologies will automatically make things happen for teaching and learning. Both the research I've been doing for the past four years in the field of EdTech, as well as my own anecdotal experience as a PreK-8 Technology Coordinator convince me that this is simply not the case. Who cares if you have a stack of Chromebooks in your classroom? Who cares if you have a 50-gigabit ethernet connection to the internet? Whoopie-ding, you have a Google Drive account, and a SMARTBoard, and an iPad! So what? What difference does it make? You have access to the technologies...but how are they being put to use? (Are they being put to use?)

Access isn't enough.

Sure, access is a factor. Teachers and students obviously need access to these technologies if there is a hope that the technologies are going to somehow transform teaching and learning. But access isn't enough.

Teachers need training--or at least time and encouragement to explore, investigate, and imagine--if they are going to incorporate tech tools into their teaching. I believe this is also true of students; modeling technology use can go a long way for developing their technological knowledge and skills. I've said before that just because students know how to use cellphones and social media doesn't mean they know how to leverage these tools, or others, for learning. I believe the same thing is true for teachers. Tech support, ongoing professional development, and just-in-time trouble-shooting are all necessary as well!

So, yes, teachers and students need access to educational technologies, if we hope to use them to change the teaching practices, to adapt the learning environment, to shift the curriculum materials. But access isn't enough.

Public domain image from Pixabay.com

Cell Phones: Tools for Learning? Or Weapons of Mass Distraction?

The other day I received an email from a recent graduate of our Teacher Preparation Program. He was helping out in a school at home, since Commencement is long past for us, but classes are still going in K-12 schools. He saw this sign hanging up at a high school teacher's door:

With thanks to my (anonymous) (former) student for allowing me to post this...

Knowing that I am fascinated by educational technology, and the way we often use consumer technologies as educational technologies in schools, this prompted a question from him:

Hmmm...I use my phone to find a lot of information, more than my computer even. Maybe though in study hall high school kids "waste" too much time on it? Or should study hall be their choice of time once in high school? Your time, use it as you want without disrupting the class? 

Technology Self-Efficacy

Imagine this scene, teachers:

You have a colleague down the hall who has been telling you all about this great new educational technology that she has been using in her classroom to amazing results. The kids are so motivated and engaged, and they are so enthusiastic about their learning. "You should try it too," your colleague encourages you.

So, you start to plan a lesson. How hard can it be? Your colleague makes is sound like the kids can just sort of dive right in and go with it. And, hey, your students are "digital natives," right? Shouldn't be a problem for them.

As your lesson rolls out, things aren't going quite so smoothly. A hand goes up, calling you over to help out. Then another hand, and another. While you are looking over one kid's shoulder at his screen, you realize that half the class is currently "stuck," and waiting for help. They start whispering to each other...

"I'm so confused!"

"Why are we doing this?"

"I'm frustrated..."

"This is dumb."

...And about that time you decide you are never doing this again. What a waste of your time--and theirs! Why did you put yourself through this anyway?

---

People who know me well--and my proclivities to experiment in my teaching practice, and my love of all things techie--might be surprised to hear that I am describing myself in this story.

Education Design Research: Design, Evaluation, and Implementation

In the current module of the design-based research course I am taking this semester, we have been focusing on three key tasks: design, evaluation and implementation. Design is (obviously!) an essential aspect of design-based research, but these other two tasks (evaluation and implementation) are also extremely important.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the design of a proposed project to address a real problem for the pre-service teachers I currently serve: how can I best help prepare them for the challenges of technology integration? In crafting my design, I have conducted what I think is a thorough review of the literature. Honestly, at least half of the reading I have been doing in my doctoral program for the past three years has been focused on this topic, so while I have certainly read new things this semester, I find I have been revisiting things I’ve read previously, and I find that I am synthesizing from many sources, seeing how the pieces fit together, and designing a way to address this problem.

Image by US Department of Education [CC BY 2.0]

Technology and "Meaningful Engagement" in Learning

My friend Dan Beerens (@DanBeerens) teaches a course in our M.Ed. program, and for the past few years he's asked me to crash his course for a bit to talk about technology and education and how technology is impacting school culture. I'm always up for stirring the pot a bit, and it's a fun time to hang out with Dan and connect with students that I will have when they take a course I teach later in their program.

During the hour or so I was with his class, Dan snapped a picture of me and tweeted it:

Enjoying the annual "Mulderization" of my grad class! @dordtcollege @d_mulder pic.twitter.com/lmffuVGZ2g

— Dan Beerens (@DanBeerens) July 23, 2015

Always a good time!

In the course of my pot-stirring, we talked about tech tools, and just what do we mean by "technology," and a bit of the history of education, and ideas for confronting misconceptions, and the idea of students being "digital natives" and their teachers being "digital immigrants." And, of course, we focused on learning. Because that's really the point of school, after all!

Sometimes we (I) get hung up on the "Ooooohh...shiny!" aspects of technology, and forget that the point of selecting technologies for teaching is...that they should help students learn.

So as part of my presentation, I shared this graphic:

Hacking the LMS: Breaking Out of the Defaults

I tend to take a very broad view of "technology." So often when we hear that word, we immediately go digital: computers, tablets, the Internet, 3D printers, wearables, etc. are "technology," right? But could a hammer also be considered “technology?”

What if we instead define "technology" as any tools designed to solve a particular problem? In his prescient (1992) book Technopoloy: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman describes technology as “largely invented to do two things: solve specific and urgent problems of physical life…[and]…serve the symbolic world of art, politics, myth, ritual, and religion…” (p. 23). When viewed this way, hammers, stethoscopes, plungers, and the Internet can all be considered technologies, though probably all in the former category rather than the latter.

Frankly, in the realm of educational technology, we are quick to think of computers first, aren’t we? But I have argued before that even a pencil is an educational technology: a tool designed—or appropriated—to solve a specific problem for education (borrowing from Postman’s language.)

Tech Tool: Make Your Own Animated GIFs

I love animated gifs. Sometimes they just hit your funny bone, right? Like this one, for instance:

Even Vader loves pizza. [Scrounged from Smosh.]

So maybe you want to create your own animated gifs? Maybe you could use one for that online course you're teaching add a little interest and humor? Or maybe you just want to try and create the next viral hit?

Telling Tales in a Technopoly: Getting Started with Digital Storytelling

I believe that storytelling is central to our humanity. We tell stories all the time, from personal histories, to imaginative bedtime stories, to morality tales, to socio-political narratives...the way we use "story" is a central part of our lives. Even the main way God has revealed Himself--the Bible--is largely comprised of stories, that combine to tell The Big Story of scripture: the Creation, the Fall, the Redemption, and the Consummation. And honestly, I think that part of how we reflect God's image is through our creativity (i.e., He is the Creator, which means we have the capability of being creative as well.)

Stories have a unique pull and an emotional element that "just the facts" cannot provide. Kieran Egan, in his lovely little book Teaching as Storytelling, says, "A good story-teller plays our emotions, as a good violinist plays a violin" (1986, p. 29). And I believe that it is this aspect that makes storytelling an essential teaching methodology, even in our high-tech world; perhaps it is even more important in our high tech world! In his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman writes that one of the essential features of a Technopoly (a culture in which technology not only plays a central role, but actually is the dominant worldview-shaper) is "the elevation of information to a metaphysical status: information as both the means and end of human creativity" (1992, p. 61) This rings true for me: we've often heard the old saying "knowledge is power," right? But is "knowing" the information enough? Information in what context? And for what purpose?

How Smart are SMARTBoards?

I occasionally get emails or phones calls from friends who are administrators or other school leaders in smaller, private schools. They may not be able to have a full-time tech coordinator (or even a part-time tech coordinator! Sometimes the principal is "the guy" for their school...) so they come to me in search of advice on their tech needs and concerns.

Since I've served as a tech coordinator in a larger (but not "large") Christian school, I understand at least some of the challenges they are facing, so I'm always willing to help out if I can. And...I have opinions...

I recently got this email from a principal friend:

Dave,

Currently, we have SMART boards in about half of our classrooms. As we contemplate moving forward, I’m wondering if you can give some input to help us make a decision moving forward. We have 6 classrooms that do not have smart boards in them. I’m wondering about the future. Are SMART boards still the best tool to use in a classroom or is there something better out there? Are smart boards on their way out? 

Being a small school, I don’t have a technology director so am left to fend for myself when it comes to making decisions regarding the implementation of technology. Any input you can give would be much appreciated. 

This was a great question, I thought. I am honestly sort of wondering the same thing. Here is what I wrote back to him:

Keeping a Level Head in a Changing Educational Environment

I think it's fair to say that the expectations for the school environment--at all levels, from Kindergarten through college--are shifting in this day and age. Technology has certainly had an impact. But pedagogy still has a role to play--and I would argue that strong pedagogy is perhaps even more important in a high technology environment.

In just a few days' time, I have had a variety of things come across my iPad that conflict and jumble together and have me thinking about the classrooms where we are teaching and learning today. It's an exciting/scary/strange/invigorating/frustrating/wonderful time to be an educator! Let me share three things that are stirring my thinking right now, and then I'll give a few beginning thoughts on how I am sorting them out.

---

First, this interesting piece, shared by a friend and fellow professor on Facebook: "Message to my Freshman Students." I hope you'll read the piece yourself, but I found it really interesting how the author expresses the different expectations for students and learning in high school and in college. One quote that I found fascinating:

"Up to now your instruction has been in the hands of teachers, and a teacher's job is to make sure that you learn...At university, learning is your job -- and yours alone. My job is to lead you to the fountain of knowledge. Whether you drink deeply or only gargle is entirely up to you."

Twitter: I Think I Figured It Out

Back in the spring of 2009, I was serving as Technology Coordinator for a K-8 private school. That job was daunting, and required me to wear several different hats:

• I taught "Computers" as a subject for grades 5-8. Keyboarding skills, digital citizenship, research skills, word processing, spreadsheets, multimedia tools, and general computer literacy were all included as parts of the curriculum.
• I was "the guy" for any and all tech support. I used to say, "If it plugs in, it's my problem." And that is sort of the way it went...one day I came to work and someone had left a boombox on my desk with a note: "This CD player doesn't work." So...yeah...
• I was supposed to be a sort of technology integration coach for my colleagues. I think this part was probably the aspect I was most passionate about, but also the part I was least likely to be able to do, with the first two on my plate. But this meant I tried to become familiar with as many different technologies as I could, so when people came asking questions, I would have answers.

It was in this way that I first joined Twitter in the spring of 2009; I had heard of Twitter before that, and I had read an article in Wired magazine (yep, I'm that geek...) about the way people were connecting with Twitter. And I had a few friends on Facebook who were talking about how much they liked Twitter.

So I joined up.

It's funny reading those first tweets. Like this one, that showed up in my Timehop today:

If you read this blog with any degree of regularity, you will know the value I place on Twitter as an essential part of my personal learning network (PLN). But it took me awhile...

It took me a while to start connecting with other educators, but once I found a couple to follow, that got me more invested in learning through Twitter.

It took me a while to start using hashtags, but once I learned that dozens (or hundreds!) of teachers connect and have discussions--chats--on Twitter, and that hashtags organize these conversations, that got me more invested in interacting through Twitter.

It took me a while to start sharing things myself on Twitter--I first mostly lurked and enjoyed what other people were sharing, learning from them--but once I learned that people responded with thanks to the things I tweeted and retweeted, that got me more invested in pushing my ideas through Twitter.

I think I figured out how to make Twitter work for me, as a tool for my own learning.

I am finding that different teacher-tweeters actually use Twitter in very different ways.

• Some use Twitter as a way of capturing ideas and resources.
• Some use Twitter as a way of collaborating other educational professionals.
• Some use Twitter as a way of connecting with others they would never have the opportunity to reach otherwise.
• Some use Twitter as a way of pushing back against the groupthink of current school culture, whether at a local, state, national, or international level.
• Some use Twitter as a way of promoting themselves.
• Some use Twitter as a way of sharing ideas and resources they are personally passionate about.

If I'm honest, I have used Twitter in all of these ways over the past six years.

If you are an educator not on Twitter and reading this--because it was shared with you via email or Facebook or printed out and left on the staffroom table--I encourage you to just dip your toe in the water at least.

Join Twitter, and approach it with a growth mindset. Find a colleague who is on Twitter and learn from her/him. Follow a few interesting educators. Eavesdrop on a chat (follow the hashtag), and don't be afraid to get in there with a tweet or two of your own.

You never know who you might be able to learn from, and what you might be able to learn!

What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 17

How many CDs do you still have laying around?

It's interesting how educational technologies continue to shift and evolve. I wrote a bit about this a couple weeks ago when I was thinking about the filmstrip I have in my desk drawer.

Today I noticed that I have a spindle pack of blank CD's in there too.

My laptop has a CD drive. I'm trying to remember the last time I used it to actually play a CD or read information off of a CD-ROM...and I can't remember. Maybe last summer? Maybe it was the summer before that!

Remember these babies?
Image by Nafija55 [CC BY-SA 3.0]

I remember, back in 1998 when I first heard about Apple's then brand-new computer, the iMac, and thinking how crazy it was that they didn't have a disk drive. Remember floppy disks? I'm old enough to remember when floppy disks were still floppy. By the time I was in high school and college, they were instead rigid plastic. Today, the only example most kids have to picture a "floppy disk" is the symbol on the "Save" button in their word processor. (I once actually had a student ask my why that symbol was used for "save." I had to go scrounging through some boxes to find a "floppy" to show him. This was five years ago already...)

Okay, so Steve Jobs was a man ahead of his time, able to see the future day when we wouldn't need a floppy disk anymore. But how about the CD? I have this partial spindle pack of blank CD-ROMs in my drawer in case I need to back things up...but when was the last time I did that? I can't remember.

I also have several of these babies in my desk drawer:

When I was Tech Coordinator, I lived and died by the 32 GB flashdrive I kept on my keychain. It had all of my mission critical files, and they came with me all the time, just in case I needed them at a moment's notice. (And of COURSE I kept a back up copy, off campus, just in case...)

But I was looking at this flash drive, and I couldn't even remember what I had saved on it, because I wasn't sure the last time I had plugged it in to my computer. (Interesting collection of old files on this one...but I won't get into that.)

Today, most of my documents are saved and backed up in "the cloud"--saved on some other computer someplace else on the internet. Yes, I still keep files on my hard drive. But find I keep stashing more and more things out in the weird network of computers that collectively make up the internet.

I have this headset in my desk drawer too. I use it when I'm making instructional videos, so I have better audio quality. (If you'd really like to see an example, here's one I made to teach one of my classes some things about the history of middle level schools, which I created for my Middle School Curriculum and Instruction course.)

Why share this? I make enough audio and video files these days that my hard drive could be filled many times over if I were to save them all on my laptop. So I save them in the cloud--on YouTube, in the example above.

This has me wondering a bit about what's next? We went from "floppy" floppy disks, to "rigid" floppy disks, to CDs, to DVDs, to flashdrives, to the cloud in less than 30 years. What will the next 30 years hold?

And will we still use the image of a floppy disk to indicate "this is the button to click to save your work?"



---

(This post is part of a series about the weird stuff teachers have in their desk drawers. You can read more about this project here, and I hope you'll share the stories of the weird stuff you have in your desk too!)

What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 10

Have you ever seen one of these?

Do you know what this is? If you are under the age of 30, you might not. (Ugh...I'm aging myself here, aren't I?) Until I came into possession of this one, I hadn't seen one of these since I was in elementary school.

What's In Your Desk Drawer? Day 3

(This post is part of a series about the weird stuff teachers have in their desk drawers. You can read more about this project here, and I hope you'll share the stories of the weird stuff you have in your desk too!)

Glasses from LensCrafters, circa 1999.

I don't wear glasses. At least not regularly...not yet.

But I have a pair of glasses in or on my desk all the time.

This goes back to my first year of teaching, when I was serving as de facto Technology Coordinator at a relatively small Christian school. I taught 6th-8th math, and a high school computer class, and in all my "spare time" as a first year teacher, I kept the school's collection of (mostly donated) IBM 486 and Pentium computers running to the best of my ability.

Technology Does Not Replace the Teacher

This year I'm serving as an instructional technology coach for my fellow faculty members. It has been interesting getting started on this--it's a new position at our institution, and I'm sort of making my own way. I've been working with colleagues on an as-needed basis to support online teaching, to work with how to use our CMS to support instruction, and to brainstorm ideas for other tech tools they might use to support their teaching.

While I've been met with a mostly positive response so far, and quite a bit of gratitude for my willingness to help with their concerns about teaching with technology, I've had a few interactions this fall with colleagues who seem very skeptical about the value of technology to support teaching and learning. They seem to view technology as a stumbling block, or even a negative influence in the classroom.

I think I understand where they are coming from. Teaching with technology can be daunting, and particularly if one doesn't feel personally comfortable with the technologies at hand. And even being comfortable using a particular technology does not mean one is comfortable teaching with that technology.