Tech Heads and Geeks

I have, for most of my career, been somewhat of a Tech Head Would-Be Geek. I have made some of these same arguments to Resisters (people who are not progressive in technology use) and have also found myself preaching to the choir sometimes about the need for a more progressive approach about using the internet and other technology in the classroom. I also used persuasive arguments, although I did not know the full extent of the startling statistics in "Did You Know" and "What If."(see link: http://www.drjansblog.typepad.com/dr_jans_blog/2007/07/michigan-school.html)

I am not a mover-and-a-shaker type, more like a moody independent thinker type, so I have never tried to force my opinion on others; I just always tried to be on very good terms with the technology coordinators and computer personnel, not to be manipulative, but because I sincerely coveted their knowledge and power to make changes.

Why? It is imperative to learn to teach in ways that use the internet because not doing so would be, speaking metaphorically, like using a saw and hammer only in woodworking when you had a whole city block of sophisticated tools designed for every imaginable job related to wood. It would be like using a quill pen when you had a printing press. Except for making students better at calligraphy, a worthy art, but hardly the objective in most cases, it would just occupy most of their time in calligraphy, not thinking. Of course, people obviously did think when there were only quill pens, but the printing press revolutionized the world. Why hold students and teachers back? World problems, such as climate change, disease, famine. tsunamis, and a million others, will not wait while we bite our fingernails wondering if we should let students use the risky internet. Of course it's risky, but so is the alternative.

I plan to use the information I glean from this blogspot to impact my teaching in the following ways:

• Be bolder and work with the progressives.
• Don't be annoyed by the ever-present Resisters, but don't let them jade my thinking. Use the argument with Resisters that is often used with gun-control fanatics: If they take guns away from honest citizens, then only the criminals will have guns. The same is true of the internet. It is used for corrupt and frivolous purposes daily, so why not use it constructively for education?
• Learn as much as I can about new tech gadgets and gizmos to try to stay less than twenty steps behind my students.