As I was watching the videos, I saw so many different stages of myself reflected back to me. From trepidation (Students 9-11, 13-14), to curious (Student 15), to excited (Students 12 and 12’s friend). Even though the videos were a bit older, I still saw some of the same concerns from the teachers about moving over to technological classrooms.

1. What if the equipment breaks?
2. What skills will the students lose?
3. What if the technology gives students the wrong idea?
4. What if the students know more about the technology than I do?

I think that a lot of these issues come down to control. Many teachers feel that to be in control of the classroom means to eliminate all uncertainty and have unchanging, predetermined plans, goals, expectations, and timelines built into the curriculum. Yet, what was very clear from the interviews is that students don’t like to learn in those ways.  In the classrooms where students were turned free to explore and be more self-directed (Level 3 classrooms, as Teacher D defined them), the students were active, engaged, and took ownership of their learning. Teacher B talked about how the students were so excited to get into the classroom with the technology, even if similar simulations were going to be run.

But, engagement alone isn’t enough. I couldn’t agree more with Teacher A when he was talking about how through technology-enhanced learning, the students are learning transferable skills such as collaboration, time management, resource utilization, etc. When teachers refuse to relinquish control, many times, the curriculum is still taught and learned, but these transferable skills are not given a chance to be practiced and developed.

The issue of control is an interesting one, and can take some teachers time to get comfortable enough to relax and loosen control. To further explore this, I would be curious to see who those teachers who said they would never want to use technology in the classroom would react to the opportunity to teach a lesson using technology with a technology expert in the room. In this way, their “troubleshooting” fears could be relaxed, they could focus on catering to the learning environment, and the students could learn from self-directed learning.  Would teachers after this experience have a different idea about using technology in the classroom? Or would they quickly revert back to not using it? Also, would the students feel more or less empowered to take risks if they knew that there was someone there with “all the answers” rather than a “fellow learner”?

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Another issue that was touched on early in the videos was the way the different genders responded to technology in the classroom. Teacher F reported that the technology favored those students who were prepared to play the system. He reported that female students in general usually were more focused on the process, not the tool, while male students tended to explore the tool (technology) instead of putting their focus on the task. Teacher A reported that female students really enjoyed having he chance to explore and experiment using technology, as it is much less public, while male students would quickly go to the extremes and see how they could push the tools. Teacher D served as bridge for these teachers and said that focusing on group by motivation, not gender, made for the best groups.

The idea that men like technology and ladies don’t is so outdated today, yet some of these thoughts still exist in the minds of teachers. Making sure that these kinds of ideas are not present in the minds of our students is important to ensure the equal access the curriculum that each student deserves. While I wouldn’t necessarily agree with the ideas these teachers expressed about genders responding to technology differently (as much of that is pushed onto students by society, not by gender), I do think their words represent the different approaches to technology that students have. It’s the classic debate of means to an end or ends to a means. Each group of students is approaching the problem from a different way. When a student focuses on the Assignment and experiments in private, they are focusing on the task. Yet, when a student experiments on the tool and wants to learn all about the tool, they are also approaching the task by focusing on the means. They want to understand the tools that they are using to complete the assignment.

I would be very curious to further explore this. One way would be to have two separate groups of students. In Group A, give the students the tools and ask them to explore. Then, the next day, give them a task to solve. In Group B, give the students the task and the tools at the same time and ask them to solve the task right away. I would predict that both groups would have unique struggles, Group A with applying the tool to the task, Group B with using the tool effectively. I realize this is a very rough experiment, but I suspect it may expose a pattern over time, especially if the researched tracked the students’ attitude toward the tools.