Nature of Technology & Decision Making

Standard 4: Nature of Technology & Decision Making

As a future elementary teacher, helping students understand the Nature of Technology (NOT) and make wise decisions about it's use will be a critical part of our joint classroom experience.  Today's elementary-aged children have grown up with what adults might think of as "new" technologies, like the internet, social media, and cell phones, among others.  Since they've had these available from the day they were born, they don't know life without them...and since these items are so enmeshed in today's culture, it might be hard for young students to critically assess them.  It will be my job to help students navigate how technology impacts their lives, including the its limits, trade-offs, implied values, positives and negatives.  As Dr. Kruse states in his article, "Implications of the Nature of Technology for Teaching and Teacher Education," “NOT understanding is crucial so teachers can assist students in understanding the processes, characteristics, philosophy and content of technology."

For elementary-aged students, a few things that I feel are critical for them to think about, early on in their tech journey, are below:

• The importance of clarifying our priorities/values, and establishing where/when technology fits on that list, so that we use it to achieve our goals, not the other way around.
• We can easily see benefits of technology use, or get enjoyment out of it, but these attachments to tech make it hard to critically assess.
• Limitations of technology - in most cases, technology is not a replacement for a real-life experience.
• Technology can not fix all problems and can actually lead to new problems.

As a teacher, I want to be consistently cognizant of my technology choices as well.  Preaching the above to students, and not practicing it myself won't be effective, so first-and-foremost, I will want to model appropriate use of technology.  This will include a variety of issues, anything from showing respect to copyright laws to helping student learn how to identify credible sources on the internet, to discussing online privacy and bullying issues, and conducting myself ethically.  I envision this modeling and discussion to really run the gamut, and I hope to have it be an ongoing, open door conversation with my students.  I'd like to use discussion of my own experience and role playing (so that they can experience different scenarios and consequences in a safe environment) to help prepare students to make wise technology choices in the future.  I think helping establish this baseline level of tech experience and knowledge is important at the elementary level.

One issue I can see being a challenge, as a new teacher, is to not get carried away with technology use in my lesson planning.  I imagine that the lure of using tech in the classroom is easy to fall prey to -- wanting to keep the kids engaged in new ways is always a goal.  I want to use it appropriately and only if something can be gained out of the experience.  Earlier in this class, we researched technologies that we found interesting that could be of use in our content area.  I chose Google Earth, and for example, can see using that platform to view a literary novel's setting, when it might be foreign to us in the classroom.  In this case, the technology can help us get a better idea of the place and time that we're reading about.  However, there are times when I can be more concrete, and actually take the students there or bring in artifacts to help illustrate a point; there are other ways to go about it.  It will be important to keep my technology use in the classroom appropriate to the content and task at hand, and not something to just grab students' attention.  

In the end, I think technology use can be exciting, but dangerous if not used deliberately.  In "Eight Stages in the Teacher Technology Journey," John Spencer writes about teachers' adoption of technology, their excitement, and how systems and expectations need to be addressed to keep tech use on track.  I think this can translate to student use as well, and it will be up to me to set the tone, establish classroom systems, and communicate expectations help my students understand and manage their technology use.

Works cited:

Kruse, J. (2013). Implications of the nature of technology for teaching and teacher education.

Spencer, J. (2015, May 20). Eight stages in the teacher technology journey [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.spencerauthor.com/eight-stages-in-teacher-technology/