Balancing Technology

As Mishra and Koehler noted, people tend to define technology differently depending on when they were born. I'm sure my 85 year old grandma and I have different views on what technology is. She hasn't the faintest idea how to text or tweet, but these are things that I can do with little difficulties. There are times when I'm torn between what I can do with my smart phone and what I used to do before I had it. I have countless recipe apps, but I still love flipping through a cookbook finding a recipe. In the NY Times article, Ms. Furman has her class write out what they love using a pen and paper. I still have a calendar and little notepad to write things down despite having the access to the apps on my iPhone. As educators, it is difficult to find a balance between what the students have access to and the tried and true methods of teaching. It becomes more difficult when money plays into the development of technology programs and classrooms. In Buffalo, many teachers have been laid off in recent years, but we've found the money to do countless projects. All schools are, or are in the process of, being fully updated with smart boards, projectors, state of the art science labs, and other technological advances. Last year, the district piloted a program replaced laptops with netbooks, and after negative feedback, the project has been abandoned. In the coming years, those teachers who received a netbook will get a new laptop. I do know that many of these funds come from grants, but it would be nice to see grants found to pay for the staff to see that these technologies are being properly implemented into the classroom so learning is enhanced. It would certainly be easier to teach a class of 22 children how to blog instead of a class of 30, but as technology keeps changing so will the challenges that we face.