July 17, 2020: Technology

I’ve also noticed something about myself.  When one lesson said, “Here’s 15 ways to xxxx”  I clicked and went on ahead with abandon, looking at everything.  When the lesson said, “Here’s 72 links to xxxx”  I could feel the curtain fall over my face.  72!  SeVEnTY-TwO! I still have not clicked there.

So, this led me to wonder what my personal numeric limit is.  And, of course, what the student numeric limit is.  Cognitive load is the current buzz-phrase, but I didn’t even want to click there because of *anticipating* cognitive over-load!  I will start my courses with a  minimum of tech tools and a minimum of “clicks” so students do not have the same curtain falling over their faces.

Right now, the market/internet/etc is simply flooded with many, many apps, programs and opportunities.  It’s chaotic.  Several apps or links will rise to the top in the next couple months (year?) and it’s impossible now to say which.  We simply don’t have time or energy to check out all of them; we are at the mercy of where we click first or what direction someone sends us.  I think of when calculators came into the math classroom – there were so many different varieties of graphing programmable calculators in the early 90’s!  Texas Instruments (TI)  rose to the top because they offered free or very inexpensive teacher support and pd.  Now, TI has a corner on that market.  TI simply dominates the hand-held graphing and programmable calculator market. (I was chair of the math department at FVS back then and in 1991 purchased Casios because they were actually more powerful – then less than 2 years later, we sold all the Casio’s and made an easy transition to TI)

So in my little world here (I’m living a very rural and sequestered life right now, so rural that it is 90 min to a covid test and 50 minutes to a grocery store and there’s frequent outages of electricity – and repair is delayed because there’s so few of us out here …..)…. So in my little world here as I decide what to explore and to learn well (because I can’t do it all), I’m looking for who has the easiest, most accessible, and best and FREE teacher training.  And of course, I’m hoping the tech I chose will rise to the top and be what everyone choses to use. 

I’m also noting something else.  For several years, I’ve had a bee in my bonnet about how I had to abandon this amazing technology that I was using in Brown Hall when I was required to move to the Science Building, which could not support the technology.  What I’m recognizing now is that in developing that tech in Brown, I was gaining skills about how to learn a new technology. And if I have to abandon what I now start using, I’ll be able to use my skills to transition to whatever becomes the standard.   

I also learned how to be humble and rely on young people – my students – to offer good suggestions about how to proceed or “do cool stuff.”  Some of our gamers last spring were giving me some really good ideas about communicating on line and fiddling with tech.  So as I work now, when I get frustrated, I know I  can ask kiddoes for help.  Few are using school email addresses (so I’ve relied on my own children), but I think I have faith that when we launch our on-line effort (because I think we must), that our students will help us.  They will love helping us.  They will love seeing us do the best we can in the realm in which they are more fluent.  They will love our humility, our care, and our work on their behalf.

I also read that young people have an easier time feeling like they are ‘with’ someone when they are in front of a screen.  I remember Paul stomping up the stairs at 2 am thinking Blaise had at least nine friends over our house raising hell in our rec room, but he was just on-line gaming with his “posse.” These boys really felt and acted like they were in the same room, but they were in their own homes, spread out over the Albuquerque metro area.  Our kids can do that – they can feel as though they are together even though they are just on-line.  Those of us over 40 (or 50?....) have more trouble doing that.  I have faith that we can build community online because of the skills and experience of the young people.