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SOURCEQUESTIONRESPONSETHEMESCOMMON THEMES
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Vicki DavisWhat do you consider before introducing a new technology?The children's future. Think about the friends that you went to college with in the 2000s. How was it that some of your classmates went through middle school and high school without taking a typing class. That was a failure on the part of their educators trying to resist technology. Now typing is a very basic requirement for schools and many jobs. Many technologies that seem new and novel to us are going to become common place and expected in the future.Being ahead of technology. Making sure our students don't fall behind and have to catch up later. The three main themes that were common among all the sources were online safety, teachers already are behind on tech, and how technology can provide large projects that have many different lessons that can be taught in a single assignment. Safety and online responsibility has to become a regular part of the curriculum. There is too much danger and randomness on the interent for young students to be able to safely interact online. Many, many educators are so far behind the technology curve, but there there are sources for them to catch up, and these educators should do everything they can to not only catch up but to make sure that they can keep their students from getting left behind as well. These large multi-faceted technologies like the metaverse and videos can provide many different steps and a very diverse lesson set for students as they make their way through these projects.
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- Vicki Davis is a blogger for the webiste coolcatteacher.com. Hosts 10-minute teacher show. Has been awarded best teacher blog and one of the top teachers on twitter.What is one type of technology that educators are not considering enough?AI and the Metaverse. AI can do incredible things now from assessing data to actually creating peoms and paintings given some relatively simple outlines. The metaverse is going to be a huge culmination of different companies and different technologies and I don't think many educators or parents are taking the metaverse seriously. Our kids are already living half their lives online, most of us have all of our personal information in a data base somewhere and we all need to pay more attention to how serious a reality our online lives are becoming.Futuristic tech, not just tech we all use now, but tech that all of us are still trying to comprehend.
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What can we be doing to help for this online future?Teaching our kids what it's like online, things like personal information and how to keep it safe and what info to not put online. About cyber-bullying and how to make the internet a generally positive place. Talking and teaching about ethical practices online.Changing things we usually talk about with students (being nice, bullying, etc) but adjusting those topics to make sense for the future.
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What is some advice you would give to other teachers about technology?It's not too late to learn and look for free options. Many educators are afraid that they have missed the boat for technology in the classroom. That they don't have the funding and don't have the expertise to include new technolgies. There are online classes and courses to learn almost any basic skill, you can learn how to fix almost anything on youtube now-a-days. There are constantly new and free technologies available online that teachers can implement into their classes. You don't need a suped up gaming PC to include more technologies in your courses. There are free resources to help with lessons, organization, and even simple learning games like math and even coding practice, alll free. Trying to get caught up to new tech.
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Shelley TerrellWhat made you decide to create your webiste?When I first started the website it was really just a blog, but back in 2009 blogs were still a technology base that many instructors knew very little about. The blog was just to discuss my thoughts on controversial teaching topics and the interaction I got was great. But as I continued the blog and started discussing more imergent technology I started to get more interaction from other instructors asking questions about tech and how to implement it and just how to learn about it themselves. Many teachers are 40, 50, 60 years old and they grew up and went to college when basic computers were the emergent technology. Just using a computer for typing and writing was as much as they learned while they were going to school. Now they are expected to teach so many new things that they were not taught.Teachers needing to catch up with technology they missed out on.
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- Shelley runs a website called Teacherrebootcamp.com which focuses on ways to help educators implement more types of technology. It has many different lists of tools for instructors to use with their lessons.What should we as educators be focusing on when it comes to technology in the classroom?Safety. Most technology is either online via apps or organizational tools or it connects to the internet. Even less advanced tech like just being online and children spending time searching and interacting online. Students need to be aware of the different ways that they can stay safe while our lives become more digital. Diffeerent webistes and search engines that emphasize children safety are a great way to start.Online safety and responsibility
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What is your favorite type of technology that you have implemented in the classroom?Videos. Having the children make videos has been a great tool. The whole process of actually creating a video is more than just turning on a camera and capturing what happens. But the process of making the video has been great for my students. It involves future planning, brainstorming, writing up outlines and/or scripts, actually using the technology, being creative with the videos, being able to speak clearly in front of others, then into the editing process. Just the whole process involves so many other steps and lessons that it has helped every child in some way or another. Technology that can teach multiple lessons in one project.
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Heather Wolpert-GawronWhat type of technology could most instructors start to implement right now to help their lessons?Screencasting. It is a very simple way to record your slideshows and your voice. That way students can get the full lesson if they are gone for some reason or you are doing distance learning or if a student just needs a bit of extra time to process the information, or just needs a refresher on a topic while doing their homework. Very simple to use, but it makes your videos and slideshows much more effective.Using technology to give students more accessability to lessons.
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Heather Wolpert-Gawron runs a website called tweenteacher.com that focusses on new technology and project-based lesson plans and giving students more options to be able to have a voice in how their education goes.What piece of advice would you give teachers about implementing technology?Do your best to meet the students where they are. If you are trying to hold back their interest on a type of tech you are going to get pushback and the students will lose interest. Educators cannot continue to pretend that teaching is the same as it's always been, these students are too smart and their brains have changed in a way that they are constantly expecting change and excitement. Think about how all social media works, it's all just one update/picture/ or video after the next. No down time, their lives are a constant stream of information, they will not sit still and work on a single piece of paper like we used to. And it is not becuase they are undisciplined or don't have the ability to focus, their brains and expectations are being changed by the world around them, and education needs to keep up.Educators still trying to teach how they learned without taking advantage of new tech.
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What is your new favorite piece of tech that you recently started using?The 3-D printer, it is so much easier and cheaper to make little supplies, to be flexible with plans, and you can even print little figurines to use as small prizes and favors to give out to students when they do well. It also can give the students more options to flex their creativity when they are in the middle of larger projects.Big complex technologies help make projects mult-faceted
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What kind of down side, if any, do you see with technology?It's not technology itself, but just being online. Search engines, for instance, can be especially varied, random, and potentially unsafe for students. There are options for students to be safer online, but parents need to be aware of which sites their children are visiting. I always do my best to make sure that students are given sites that are child-friendly and have more educational options, but I obviously cannot control what they have access to at home. So when I give an assignment to search something online it is very easy for a parent to not pay attention and just let their child search around unsupervised. Online safety and parent involvement
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