Technology Incorporation Will Be New Educational Modus Operandi

When I began my college educational experience, the move toward advanced instructional technology was still in its birth stages. I remember walking to the library and physically checking out books at the University of Memphis. I remember having only dial-up access in the dorm room with which to complete assignments. The first time I learned to use online databases for research were during my graduate school days amidst the hills of the University of Tennessee. Those in charge of editing Modern Language Association (MLA) style struggled to keep abreast of new technological changes more than I did climbing up and down those hills going to my classes. Everything was new, and it evolved every single day, it seemed. New kinds of electronic sources were constantly available, warranting a new way to cite them.

               

Much, however, has changed since then. I couldn’t have imagined upon my entry into academe the sort of environment in which I would be teaching and learning now, a realm where students use laptops daily and the landscape is more often dominated by “cloud computing”: the ability to save and share documents between devices because the storage space for the information resides in that nebulous world of cyberspace. It is a era where I can stroll around the classroom with a tablet computer, known as an iPad (RIP, Steve Jobs, and many thanks), which is thinner than most books and allows me to interact with my students while they are blogging or posting responses to a given instructional prompt on a social learning site. Boy, these are days, and I’m elated to live in such an information-rich, connected era.

Why is it important to have technology in a classroom these days? Well, first, as any good educator will tell you, the technology should never be the focal point. It is only a vehicle—albeit a rather powerful one when coupled with an educator who is either savvy in using it to deliver instruction or is very willing to learn. The importance can be stated in a few choice words: digital literacy, collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, and real-world applicability. These ideals cannot be attained in the same way with standard paper, pencil, and textbook as they can with the appropriate technological tools.

Ultimately, I have been privileged throughout my teaching career to have access to technology in the classroom. Initially, my move to teaching secondary education in a small rural district after having taught for several years in a large, anonymous university environment where technology was readily available was a little disconcerting. It has taken me over three years to bring my classroom into the 21^st century. Some of it I have done through district funding, some through grants, and a good deal through my own personal funds.

In the spring of 2010, my English classroom was selected as a recipient of the 1:1 Laptop Initiative, meaning that each student would receive a laptop for daily classroom use. Managing such an environment is not an easy task. Weaving the technology into the instruction takes much training and planning. It is not a setup appropriate for the proverbial faint of heart. In addition to organization, the second most daunting aspect of efficiently managing a technology-oriented classroom is the on-the-spot troubleshooting that such technology requires. However, in the end, establishing a technology-based classroom does eliminate several hours of valuable future planning time once necessary materials are created and saved.

I now run a mostly paperless classroom. We still must rely on paper for some of our assignments because not all of my students have Internet access at home. My students use Edmodo.com, Writeboard.com, and Evernote.com as collaboration tools, submit assignments—which will be graded and returned electronically—on the course management site Rcampus.com, and complete work using various other sites that encourage higher order thinking skills.

I have not yet had the chance to witness an impact on test scores, since our End of Course examination was piloted last year during a semester I was teaching another course, but I am looking forward at the end of this semester to seeing how my students’ scores match up to other students in the school and statewide—and to gauge what factor I believe technology may or may not have played in that role. I have seen significantly more engagement in student learning since I moved from the traditional paper-pencil-textbook format to technology-based learning, and I saw positive results on last year’s writing examination after incorporating technology to teach students how to write persuasively.

As mentioned, technology is not the sole answer to education woes; of course, it takes a qualified teacher with adequate content knowledge and delivery skills, but with those factors in place, technology is crucial to students’ success in the 21st century. The ability to collaborate and to readily access valuable information, along with access to tools that allow for differentiated learning, have the potential, in the right hands, to revolutionize learning as we may have known it. It will most certainly be the new modus operandi of instruction, and we must, as a society, be ready for it.