Technology V Technolgy

I get asked, all the time, to suggest apps, sites, programs for all manner of topics, but most frequently it is about Math or Science.  I’m not too sure why, because they lend themselves more naturally to digital design? Because we still think of writing and reading tasks as best done on paper?  Oh wait… there is one more… I also, frequently, get asked about “How to Practice Keyboarding”. That is a rant for another day, I think, as there are multiple layers to that whole discussion. Suffice it to say, I feel STRONGLY that “jjj fff kkk ddd” is a big old waste of time and effort. This is the one and only “practice site” I recommend: TypeRacer

There are a few things I’d like to share in this post, so there are some pictures and links and a bit of extra back-story.  I’d love to hear what you think about old and new technology…. for now, here are my thoughts.

First, let me present a “Storify“ from a recent #bcedchat hosted on Twitter.  (Storify allows you to select and curate any collection of social media content and organize it into a “story”.) The topic was comparing 1990’s Tech to today’s.  One of the first comments was a reference to The Bare Naked Ladies hit ’90s song “If I had a Million Dollars”. It leapt out at me because it was that song I used in my first class, in the early ’90s, and is anchored to a memory of a particularly special-to-me student.  Here is an excerpt:

This boy, though, didn’t write, couldn’t read when I took the

class, was about 80 pounds of anger and not much else.

By the end of that year, he would write me little stories–

about 4 sentences long. I still have one. And I remember it, to this

day, without having to look at the copy I kept. It read:

 

“One day, I won a million dollars. I bought my wife a car”

Please read the rest of the story here on my companion blog It is all about IT.

But back to the point… what do most people think of when they think of Technology? iPads and computers?  Calculators? SMARTBoards?

The other day I was over at the high school I graduated from in 1983 (yes, shut up and stop doing to the math, I’m 50) talking to the physics teacher, S, about an app installed on the iPads, designed to measure, record and graph velocity.  As we chatted, S expressed his reservations around using this sort of technology.  As he described for me the “old” method of doing a velocity lab, I kind of remembered the activity, sort of was able to picture a machine something like this:

 

The point is, it marks the paper tape moving through, and then is used to graph the velocity of the object that pulled the paper through.  I can’t really picture the machines we used, but I can hear the sound (in my head) of the tape being marked. Realistically, the same machines are probably still on the premises. As S and I chatted, though, he kept coming back to the point of technology making the job too easy, the students being too reliant on it. I held up my hands and said “Hey, wait…. the Ticker tape machine IS technology, no?  Why don’t you bring them both in, and the kids could compare them”.

It was that lovely moment of validation for both of us.  You can employ educational technology, without throwing out favoured practice and tried-and-true activities. It reminded me that when I applied for this job, I anchored my presentation to the Simple Machines.