One of my graduate students (95% of them are teachers) had a comment: "I didn't register for a Technology course!" -- this comment was made because I use Blackboard and require students to post at least 6 comments/semester (this is the On-campus course), and the final take home exam, which is a project proposal, is required to be posted on a blog created by the students (Yes, I do have a training session and a handout with step-by-step instructions on how to create and post to a blog).
It is not the first student and I suspect won't even be the last with this complaint. Many teachers hate technology even if the new generation is tech savvy and soon will consider their teachers outdated and even "dumb."
No matter what conference for educators I go to I always find a strong trend that predicts a big change for the future of education: Online, Podcast, iPod, text messaging, blog, wiki, and of course very strong entrance of Second Life.
A friend of mine Michael McVey faculty at Eastern Michigan University responded in an e-mail:
"I think technology is becoming a chore for these new teachers.
How disappointing....
So, here is something for your students to consider . . .
Tweens are the group most interested in taking online courses. What are you future teachers going to do, beat that enthusiasm for online courses out of them somehow?
Michigan, by the way, has a 20 hour requirement that students take an online experience before they graduate from high school.
Then there is this article from the New York Times, relating the fact that many instructors today are teaching in online environments. One out of five college students have taken an online class. And that number is growing.
Why do they fight it so?"
Yes, that is true I just wish my teacher students would realize how important is to know what their students use (since most of the teens have a MySpace blog, text message, and surf the web daily).
But I take the risk of having bad teacher evaluations just because my students hate using the blog... who cares in the end if they at least know what that word means when their students talk on the school halls!
Michael even has sent me a cheering joke:
Q: How many teachers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. Teachers can't handle change!
No comments:
Post a Comment