| TWT Portfolio Home | Teaching Philosophy | TWT Statement | Courses Taught | Technology and the Classroom |
I believe that critical thinking skills must extend beyond the classroom. In order to provide students with the resources they need to be active participants in a globally networked community, I try to incorporate traditional education in reading and writing skills with thoughtful discussion on matters of concern in community and culture. To this end, engagement with technology is essential for achieving my classroom goals. Many students today are already highly fluent in online and technological discourses—they cannot remember a time before the internet, and they use many kinds of technology on a regular basis in their daily lives.
Because of its ubiquitousness, however, students often interact with technology in a passive or unreflective manner. I therefore aim in my classroom to encourage a more dynamic and thoughtful use of technology. There are innumerable questions that can provide active classroom discussion of these issues, such as: How do we shape our language to be more appropriate for an online chat than for a conversation with a professor? What ends do these different vocabularies and styles of writing accomplish? How might overuse of search engines like Google limit our ability for complex and comprehensive research? How might blogs or online discussions create new spaces for student interaction and classroom productivity? Most students have never been asked to question how they shape the technology they use and how it in turn shapes them, an exercise that is crucial for educating informed and responsible citizens.
I believe that technology in the classroom should be seen as a supplement, as an opportunity, and, above all, as an informed choice. It should not be seen as a replacement for traditional teaching methods, and digital presentations should not replace lecture and discussion formats for presenting material. Technology should not be something depended upon so heavily that it becomes invisible and teachers stop considering why and how they are using it. PowerPoint and other visual presentations have a tendency to make classroom conversations one-way: students sit and stare at a screen without engaging with the material. To prevent this, I try to combine my use of technology in the classroom with question and answer sessions, class discussions, and small group projects that consider the ideas presented. I have found that continuously asking questions of the students throughout class keeps them alert and generates more fruitful employment of course material than would any type of unidirectional presentation. I also find that discussions about the technologies used in class--be they pencil, digital image, or video--focus my students' attention to the fact that technology, despite its many benefits and constant presence, is a tool--something that can both limit or enhance our connections to the worldwide community, depending on how we use it.