Teaching Technology: Something to be afraid of?

The Future?

Imagine a futuristic world. I bet you have already thought of it, as I too have on a rainy day or even when stuck in a bumper to bumper traffic jam, and already have a clear picture coming to mind. Perhaps you think of floating skyscrapers that have been designed for space. Maybe you even think of a clean environment that has automatic trees and regulations on food consumption. Myself? Well, in that particular moment, I think of my car spouting wings and flying far away from the congested highway that I found myself in. In education, the futuristic world that our students will encounter seems to be, at least thought of now by adults, administration, and politicians, as a technology centric world. Computers are everywhere, as is Bluetooth and the internet, and until we grasp and prepare our students for mastering technology, we have failed their future. 

Yikes. Not only is that just a tad daunting, the gravity of the push towards technology is freighting. The narrative that is forced 'This is the way of the future' and 'Get on board or get left behind' is enough to send any teaching packing. And that is a terrible thing, because when we force such change, no matter how futuristic it may be, fear sets in. And when fear overcomes us, then change is no longer a practical option. And when we allow fear to overcome our teachers, this fear through many forms is then evident in its affects on our students. 

Technology is not a bad thing. 

Technology may be moving at a pace that we ourselves may not be comfortable with, but still, technology is not a bad thing. 

In fact, technology has abilities to open up the classroom in ways that weren't even dreamed to have been possible sixty years ago. Technology can send mail to another person within seconds. Datasheets and inventories can be recoded and monitored with the click of a button. And if ever anyone needed help, a single push of a button would connect a live video feed to someone half way across the world. Pretty cool, right! It is, this new way of using technology, but it is still the way that adults would find technology useful. One of the scariest things about technology, rather teaching technology, is the fact that we must be open to developing uses with this technology that would be helpful to our students and moreover, learning in general. 

In their article, "Critical Inquiry and Civic Engagement," Dejaynes and CurmiHall assess the ways that a focus group of students manage and study the media outputs and stereotypes that are portrayed upon women of color. Now, this may seem like a topic that has little to do with technology, and rather a lot to do with social justice, but the beauty of this integration is that students are learning to use both in a way that matters to them and their world. 

By exploring this topic, students showed the different ways that one could learn together. This very technology, "Changes the design of connected learning" (1) while providing four main components to this technological learning that establish a base foundation in which one can spring off of. The first is academic learning and literacies. Which when described in Jenkin's "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture" is exceptionally important to developing new media literacy skills. Essentially, one needs to know how to read and write to be able to function well in a technological world. The second aspect of Youth Participatory Action Research that was developed from Dejaynes and CurmiHall was cultural and critical epistemologies. This second resources helps students identify the 'laws and rules' of the internet world and how to function within them. The particular study in which they were working in, the portraying of colored women in the media, shows them how sometimes people do not function within these rules and these actions have inverse and negative effects on the people such cyber abusers are portraying. This negative stereotype threat is described better in Haddix and Sealey's article "Digital Literacies and Urban Youth." Negative stereotyping is portraying such stereotype so much to some group or peoples that even they start to believe it, and the slightest connection to that stereotype will forever mark that person as that direct stereotype. It has terrible outcomes and the amount of those outcomes is far greater on something that moves fast like the internet.

Which is why as teachers, we need to be vigilant of this threat. This last reason, is one of the reasons why I think a lot of potential and established teachers are afraid to use the technology. It can be hard to monitor and hard to track. Students may be good citizens, or they may not be. But don't let the few struggling students make technology, and the cyberworld, seem like a bad place, because this technology holds multiple unexplored possibilities for our students.

Which is reason number three, the youth development. In the exploration of media effects of the portrayal  of colored women, those young students something that mattered to the world around them. In turn, they learned what stereotypes the world sees about them. Through this empathy, and recognition of stereotyping and its 'not okay' effects on others, students developed a board in which there students could recognize the same stereotypes people often said about them. It is through this development of not only empathy and technology that we saw students connect to their world. This connection is the final point of this new connected learning. The ability for the youth to organize and engage in civic duties. 

How cool is this! Students not only tackled a problem that mattered to them, but they learned more about it and its effects on others while also discovering empathy, and teaching it to other students! It may seem like an 'out their project' but the results are undeniable. 

The truth is that technology is a bit overwhelming. At times, it is easiest as a teacher to identify all of the things that are wrong with technology. Cyberbullying, inadequate funding in different socioeconomic households and schools, and IT problems. The list seems to go on and on, and in a world where the printer and photocopier never seem to work, how could we ever pull off learning like what was listed above? Never mind through videogames and virtual realties that Jenkins also suggested! I get it. I do. But the truth is, that world that we dreamed of isn't possible if we aren't willing to change to be apart of it. You don't have to take big steps, but as a teacher it is our job to be a student. We need to learn for our students and for ourselves. It doesn't have to be big, start a blog or use and app to track reading logs, but gradually start to show yourself technology. As you do, you and your student's worlds will grow. The future is waiting and maybe someday, with your newfound knowledge, you help invent the winged car! 

Links used-

Dejaynes and CurmiHall's "Critical Inquiry and Civic Engagement"

https://uwmil.instructure.com/courses/373649/files/29079868?module_item_id=9453932

Jenkin's "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture

https://uwmil.instructure.com/courses/373649/files/28564761?module_item_id=9123310

Haddix and Sealy's "Digital Literacies and Urban Youth." 

https://uwmil.instructure.com/courses/373649/files/28564743?module_item_id=9123311