Week 2 Tech. in Ed. AEDU209 

To Tech or Not to Tech

Mr. Wolfe’s blog, posted August 2, 2010, on:  Why Use Technology in The Classroom, described me as one of many who view technology as a nuisance, rather than trying to find a way to utilize its positive force.

    
It brought back to mind, a few years back, when I was tutoring a middle school aged student, how technology solved some learning issues that I was experiencing. My student was just as intellectually impaired as he was in his fine motor and verbal skills, and resistive to my traditional classroom, old school techniques. When his mother decided it would be best for me to work with him on his iPad, I then became the resistive teacher.  I had never worked on one before, and did not even know how to turn one on.  My student’s mother told me quite simply, that he would show me, and he did. As we sat together for the next two hours, we transformed from my teacher directed method, where I made all the decisions, to that of the constructiveness method described in Melissa Taylor’s January, 2011 post on, What is a Constructivist Classroom? My student, who had poor fine motor skills, could not talk, and had sever intellectual impairment was manipulating this technological device, communicating likes and dislikes before my very eyes.  As I learned to use this device in further lessons, resistance on both are parts faded away completely.  Although my student was not diagnosed as Autistic, he took to the iPad just as easily and was completely drawn in by this tool. Studies shown in Apps for Autism – a 60 Minutes Story, where iPads increase the attention span, proved to be the case with my student as well.  Just like the little girl that crinkled up the page with numbers, unable to concentrate, who suddenly was able to focus on the numbers presented in the iPad, so was my student when he worked on the letters of the alphabet.  

I am beginning to understand what Mr. Wolfe’s paper suggests, that today’s student sees technology as a necessity, and that I need to as well.  Also mentioned in his blog, is the word “part” in that technology needs to be part of every teachers curriculum. Part is not all, which makes it less threatening to the novice educator like myself.