Thursday July 4th 2013
Our conceptual understandings: I still do not always trust the Internet and online saving – storage devices. I cannot hold onto to them, so where does the information go? No one has explained this to me yet in a way that I understand, and that lack of physical evidence causes me to doubt and fear that all my work will be lost. I have little faith so it seems in ICT.
Our experiences & Our relationships with technologies: My experiences with ICT are good, bad, and indifferent to ICT. Mostly I find that ICT only works when I do not need it to. It is sort of like “Murphy’s Law” and that ICT will break down or go offline or whatnot when needed most.
Good things are how fast and instantaneous I can communicate with friends world wide and family overseas. How did missionaries live in Asia & Africa before email and AC? I cannot imagine waiting for a boat (months instead of hours to travel globally) for your post (long outdated by the time you got it) or no respite from the heat (not to mention corsets and stockings).
The bad is the overdependence on ICT. What happens to your paperless & wireless classroom, when the Wi-Fi goes down? What happens when you leave your smart phone at home or locked in your desk at work? What happens when files are corrupted and hard drives crash?
The indifference comes downs to the amount of time you want to be online or how much you want to be found. I don’t care for “shoot ‘em up” video games, but I do harbor a secret addiction to solitaire & free cell card games (not to mention that stupid black cat! http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/chatnoir/chatnoir.html).
Our relationships with each other about and through technology: I find that when blocked from Facebook – I am okay. People back home seem to be sadder I’m physically missing, as opposed to what I ate that day or what quiz I took. Whatever happened to letter writing or emailing skills? If people really do need or miss me that much then call! We can even call text or video chat via Skype Gmail or MSN now too!
When my phone battery dies I can read a book and not listen to my music until I return home. I do not need to play falling fruit or gemstone games on the bus or train. I do not need to watch TV en route either, but actually that makes me more nauseous than anything.
I turn off my Wi-Fi on my smart phone, as I do not want to be found by students or parents after 6pm. I am entitled to have a life and I would rather prefer to walk through the air-conditioned malls, interact with human sales associates, and read. On that note I do love my Kindle and when that does not work or is in a mood, that indeed makes me rather hysterical.
Our beliefs: Human nature and society have always been a history of change and evolution. We are a species driven by the use of tools and those tools, skills, and level of sophistication has changed over the millennia. We have gone flint stones, to chisels, to the pyramids, to cement and archways, to castles and bridges, to roads and cities, and now skyscrapers, and the Internet. Human nature is driven by the technology at hand, and we constantly desire more of it and better of it. Those instincts have shaped our beliefs about ICT and reflect in our ever-changing use, desire, and demand of it.
Personally, ICT is a have to not a want to in my life. I enjoy the benefits such as IMAX 3D movies, TV, talking to friends and family overseas via phones and the Internet. Yet, if all the electricity stopped, I’d be most upset over the loss of my AC in Singapore. Then I’d have to go out to the bookshop for something on paper to read, and fried noodles with an iced coffee from the hawker stalls who cook over flames. I’d sweat like a pig while enjoying a good meal and book under an umbrella out of doors! J
Our relationships with educational institutions with regards to technology: I have been through the gauntlet of having nothing, to a computer lab with ICT teacher. Then I went to booking a lab 2 weeks in advance and around the ICT teachers’ schedule, for a class project or research period. After that it was having netbooks to be signed out at a weeks notice, and finally to now where I am in a 1 – to – 1 laptop school where the Wi-Fi is temperamental and the printer-photocopier even more so! As for ICT, I can take it or leave it as I have been teaching for over 15 years now and I get amazing results from students no matter we did or did not have for ICT at the time. As for me, I can adapt or die and if that seems to drastic, then how about that I could evolve or marry a rich man and retire? ;D
Technological dimensions:
Learning to use technologies: Learning to use technologies, has been an on the go experience for me over the years. I learn best by doing and having step-by-step instructions or a troubleshooting document/person to help if I get stuck. I will need to be walked through the ICT once, then I need to time to explore, experiment, and either enjoy a great success or fail beautifully. Then repeat.
Learning technologies with technologies: I started on PCs and never had a Mac until last year in Mexico. I still don’t get the big deal. I find what the computer deems as “intuitive” to be annoying. I do like the speed of the machine, but the sound sucks and I don’t do enough with graphics to care about them. Whatever I am given, is what I use, therefore my indifference to it all helps me be flexible and a quick learner.
Inventing uses for technologies as we learn to use them & Inventing technologies as an evolution of our learning to use technologies: As a life ling learner role model for my students I tend to reflect more at the end of a unit or rotation, and then I go back and tweak. As a full time teacher I do not have the hours in the day to surf and play or seek out new ICT life. Students and I swap pieces of ICT and ideas all the time, as we look for movies, TV, books, information, and music online. My department colleagues and I are really a great team and we are constantly sharing news articles, and stuff for the classroom with one another. It is more in the spirit of sharing and maintaining a constant front per grade level. At department meetings is where we express our comments, questions, and concerns over the unit so far and any end of unit reflection that needs to happen. The Google software and applications are constantly improving and changing, and therefore it’s uses become even more available or adaptable for our classroom. Like all things we are a work in progress…
I am also apprehensive about saving everything on the computer. No matter how much we spring forward in the ICT world, I think I will always think about the “what if”. Yes I do backup files, but I still prefer to have somethings in hard copy format. From my experiences it will be awhile yet before teachers are paperless…we like our “stuff” and being prepared! Unfortunately it does still happen…internet goes down. We need to have faith that as technologies expand and improve, they will become more dependable.
Students are already spending more and more time in front of the computer screen. Right now students and teachers have a choice about the amount of time they spend on the computer.
I wonder if we will continue to have that choice in the future?
True dat! I LOVE stuff! Especially if it is free and I can get 25 copies for my class! ;D As for the future I am hoping for a Star Wars or Star Trek like existence. Tablets, spaceships, humans getting along & killing other planetary aliens instead… 😀
One of the key areas of change needed in the field of education identified in research literature is teacher’s beliefs, and attitudes toward, ICT. If teachers don’t value the need to provide leadership and instruction about, with, and through ICT, they won’t take the time or trouble to engage with it. Many teachers have a history of technological glitches derailing lessons. For many of these teachers, these derailments have been upsetting enough to lead them to say, “Not for me, not now.” They perceive ICT as a professional add on, one that they can take or leave, and they decide to leave it. If, however, we perceive our relationship with technological phenomena, digital and otherwise, as essential to human existence, then our professional relationship to technology changes. In order to make this change, we have to consider our human relationship to technology, all technology, as inseparable from human existence. Then, when we consider digital technology, we can see that our relationship with digital technology is also inseparable from human existence. Yes, any technological phenomena is going to break down at some point – a flat tire on the way to work, a clogged kitchen drain, a shoe that causes blisters. But that does not mean we don’t use technology. When the technologies we depend on don’t work we find a work-around. We are prepared for eventual technological failure: we carry a spare tire, a jack and a tire iron, we rent a drain snake from the tool rental company, we use bandages to protect our feet. We have relationships to all technologies, and as educators, we have a professional responsibility to become sophisticated leaders in the formation of future society in terms of our human involvements with digital technologies. I appreciate your ambivalent relationship with ICT, I’m sure we all feel similar sentiments – these are very challenging times for humanity and education. However, I encourage you to examine what it means for your students, and their future ability to participate in shaping the course of human history, because they were provided the leadership and instruction they needed to be effective, contributing members of knowledge era society.