Last
year, I bought my iPad and I went technology crazy. I researched, read, played
and joined all sorts of PD communities trying to get an information overload. I
was successful. I had so much information that I was thrilled to implement with
my classes the following year! So at the beginning of this year, I passed on my
information overload to my students. Within the first week I gave them access
to my edmodo classroom, the eTextbook, a twitter hashtag to follow, a dropbox
account, the textbook review website and a weekly online quiz website. Thats a
lot of information to handle and I soon realized that I needed to backtrack. I
had so many ideas of what to use, but I did not implement them in an effective
manner. In my case, technology was too much.
From that
sad day in class when my kids were ‘mindblown,’ I learned that just as the
teachers are trying to figure out technology integration in their classrooms,
so are the students learning how to use it in a manner that benefits their
learning process. Teachers need to be mindful of this as they decide what technology
to use in their lessons and ensure that even though there are so many ideas,
programs, and apps to be used in this technologically focused world, not every
one of them is going to be successful and act as an advancement to a lesson -
some might be more detrimental than helpful.
Kulm, G. (2007, October). How Much Technology is Enough--
or Too Much?. School Science & Mathematics. pp. 220-221. Retrieved from
http://web.a.ebscohost.com.cyrano.ucmo.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?nobk=y&sid=c94929da-d91b-4bc4-be5c-b1a85777b7a3@sessionmgr4001&vid=3&hid=4206