The trap of technology

After being in the placement for a week or two, I'm starting to see some ways that technology could be a hindrance to a classroom. My mentor teacher uses technology fair amount, and she uses it for good purposes. She has played a few videos off YouTube, things like speeches of Malcolm X. She also uses a lot of multimedia, like documentaries, and will occasionally put up a webpage on the projector and read the text of that. She also occasionally uses powerpoint during a lecture.

There are pros and cons that I've seen in the classroom. The internet and videos give an unique point of view that can clearly be seen. When looking at a description of a person in history, my teacher kept saying "This is a biased viewpoint, don't accept everything it says." This is a good primary source to get an opinion on a controversial figure.

However, there are a few disadvantages that I can see. The technology takes a long time to navigate and set up. When looking for a Malcolm X speech, she loses her previous bookmark, and takes a few minutes to find a video, and then, when she plays it, it isn't what she wanted, so she looks again and finds the video. But, the searching took a few minutes of class time, and if you have many forms of multimedia in one class, you may end up uses 10 minutes of class just switching it around.

The lesson that I'm taking away from my examples, is that an effective teacher should pre-plan the set-up of technology, and that improvisation with technology can be a eater of class time.

Teacher tips wiki

So, I may be creating a reputation of myself as a technophile. Which is, in itself, not a bad thing. I have been humorously been poked at for my excitement for different kinds of technology and being a advocate for them.

But sometimes they have so much damn potential!

My newest foray into web 2.0 is something I'm really excited about, more so than I possibly should be. For a long time I've wanted to compile a list of interesting or innovative teaching activities or techniques that I can use in my classroom. And today, it hit me. I could create a wiki where the content is just that. And people could post and read it and get ideas and comment on others' ideas, in the true wiki form.

If you are interested, the address is http://macteachertips.pbwiki.com. I would love everyone to go and post their ideas right now!

This may be something that only I use as a file to keep track of my ideas.

But..

ideally, I'd want this to be a work in progress for a long time, with a scope that could reach far further than just the MAC program. And, I'm sure that other sites like this exist, and we could also collaborate with their site. But thats an ideal.

Lets see what the reaction is in the first few days.