INITIATIVE FOR LITERACY IN A DIGITAL AGE
  • Home
  • Our Initiative
  • The Divergent Award
    • 21st Century Literacies Lecture Series
    • LECTURE VIDEOS
  • InitiatED Conference 2023-Nashville
  • InitiatED Project
    • InitiatED micro-credentials
  • Our Team
    • Affiliates/Collaborators
    • Collaborate
    • Leadership Team Interest Form
  • Our Thinking
    • Call for Participation
    • Grant Opportunities
    • Military Connected Resources
  • Text Sets to Push the Canon

Our Thinking

Snapshots of our thinking and grappling with current issues related to our work.
Latest blog

Coming to Terms with Technology

1/12/2014

1 Comment

 
by Jose Paco Fiallos


I am an average 30-something living in 2014: I upgrade my smart phone at the earliest chance; all of my devices in my home are connected to the internet, even my air conditioner; I am part of many social media networks. I was raised with technology, from video games to personal computers to A/V equipment. But in my classroom I am something of an anachronism. Most of the technology that I am fluent with in my life gets checked at the door.

I have been to many presentations advancing this or that tech tool that would revolutionize the English classroom. I work with many teachers who live and die by their class social network, their smart board, their tablet computer, or their students’ use of apps on their cell phones. I, too, use these tools at various times in my own class, but never as the centerpiece.

I think I might be a little biased against technology when it comes to instruction. Maybe it comes from observing counties and school administrators using funds for new technologies that they then don’t provide training for, or that don’t have any immediate purpose in the classroom and so become little more than expensive toys gathering dust. Or maybe it’s because our textbooks are out of date and class sets of novels are constantly deteriorating. And as the debate over whether to convert to entirely digital textbooks and assigning each student their own tablet computer continues, important decisions about texts get pushed back.

Education, as a system, is a little too reactionary, I think. Or maybe impulsive is a better word. As educators we know that there are problems with some aspects of the system, from curriculum, to instruction, to assessment. And wouldn’t it be simple if there was a single piece of technology, or even a suite of tech tools that would address those problems and just make everything better?

There are tools being used effectively by teachers. I know it happens. And so I guess I am just a stodgy old English teacher who is tied to books and pen and paper; ink on the page, so to speak. And as such, I think that any tool, whether it be high or low tech, should not impede access to text in any way. Rather, technology should only serve as a means of increasing access, or even better, broadening the definition of what text is.

So maybe this will serve as a new beginning for me. It is helpful to state in concrete terms, putting digital ink to digital paper, what my own tech goals are.

1 Comment
Vanessa link
2/18/2021 04:27:36 pm

Thanks great postt

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Contributors





    George Boggs
    Edgar Corral
    Jose Paco Fiallos

    Katherin Garland
    Charise Kollar
    Tresha Layne
    Mark Meacham

    Raúl A. Mora

    Barbara Pace
    Amy Piotrowski

    Rikki Roccanti

    Ekaterina Rybakova
    Sheri Vasinda

    Amy Vetter
    Shelbie Witte

    Sergio Yanes

    Archives

    November 2019
    March 2019
    September 2018
    June 2017
    April 2017
    April 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014

    Categories

    All
    21st Century Literacies
    Access
    Amy Piotrowski
    Barbara Pace
    Charise Kollar
    Classic Literature
    Classroom
    Dewey
    Digital Natives
    Edgar Corral
    Ethics
    Film
    Flipped Classroom
    George Boggs
    Google Glass
    Grafting
    Inquiry
    Instruction
    Jose Paco Fiallos
    Journey
    Kathy Garland
    Katie Rybakova
    Language Arts
    Media
    Multimodality
    Music
    Pinterest
    Popular Culture
    Preservice Teachers
    Qualitative
    Raul A. Mora
    Research
    Rikki Roccanti
    School Reform
    Sergio Yanes
    Shelbie Witte
    Technology
    Video
    Wikipedia
    Young Adult Literature
    Young Writers' Camps

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Our Initiative
  • The Divergent Award
    • 21st Century Literacies Lecture Series
    • LECTURE VIDEOS
  • InitiatED Conference 2023-Nashville
  • InitiatED Project
    • InitiatED micro-credentials
  • Our Team
    • Affiliates/Collaborators
    • Collaborate
    • Leadership Team Interest Form
  • Our Thinking
    • Call for Participation
    • Grant Opportunities
    • Military Connected Resources
  • Text Sets to Push the Canon