Rolling Down the Digital Highway
By John Phillips
The world is an ever-evolving place. From the invention of the airplane to the first home computer, technology has influenced our lives ways that once seemed unimaginable. It has influenced the way that we learn as well. Having dedicated so much time in the past two years to the study of educational technology, I have found myself immersed in the latest and greatest technology by necessity. As I reach the end of my time at MSU, I find myself asking the question “Well, now what?”
“Isolation is the virus of education.” (Rushton Hurley, MACUL 2011)
One of the greatest opportunities that I have been afforded throughout this journey is the opportunity to interact and collaborate with educators from all over the world. It amazes me as we move more and more to the web how small our world truly is. I have interacted with educators from as far away as India, and as close as Indiana. The common interest that has been shared amongst all of us has been the best education for the children that we are tasked with teaching. With that connection, we have pushed each other to think of newer and better ways to use technology to enhance the lives of our students. This collaborative process is vital as we continue to look for ways to enhance our learning as educators.
The Internet offers us one of the best places to collaborate with each other. If I am in need of a resource for a topic, I often crowd-source my problem to find a solution. Crowd-sourcing, for those unfamiliar, is using tools such as Twitter and Facebook to connect with other educators. Through my use of these tools, I have developed a PLN (professional learning network) that I can rely on to help me in a jam. I also can draw new ideas from these folks as we all share things that we stumble across. The conversation that flows across these mediums can be pedagogically challenging and thought stimulating. We live in a world of real-time, all the time, communication. Educators need to jump on board.
Another way that I can continue my learning in the future, as well as other educators, is to join groups that help stimulate conversation and idea sharing. Groups such as MACUL in Michigan, and the Discovery Education Network across the US, dedicate a tremendous amount of resources to helping teachers continue to grow professionally. Monthly, the DEN has webinars with experts in the educational technology field from around the world. The best part is that they are FREE! Utilizing this opportunity will help all educators grow professionally. How many of us can say they have had a conversation with Jason Ohler, one of the father’s of digital storytelling. MACUL and the DEN also maintain active social networking sites, and send out stimulating articles and resources that they come across. As I said in the opening, my classes have forced me to stay on the cutting edge, and these two groups have helped me and will continue to help me in the future.
“There’s no going back, only forward.”
One of the things that I have found while studying the various effects of technology on the classroom is that we are always looking to the past for what has been successful, and are leery to try and just push into the future. Personally, I am always looking for new information to drive me ahead and change how I do things, even if it means hitting some speed bumps along the way.
The world that we are living in is one of immediate response. Curious about the height of the Eiffel Tower? Google it. Not sure where to eat for dinner? Ask the dining app on your smart phone for a recommendation. As educators, there is a fear of the immediate response generation. How dare a student not memorize the order of the presidents? With that information being just a click away, how dare we waste the valuable time of our students on tasks such as this? I think that being able to access information quickly allows you to free your brain for other tasks: higher-level tasks. Rather than cramming our brains with facts that may come in handy sometime in the future, we need to be able to take those facts and synthesize them into new ideas.
As we approach the classroom for the next time in August, we have to be willing to move forward with this immediate response generation in mind, and be willing to allow the immediate fact-finding and serve as guides to help them take that information and use it in a different way. We need to teach them how to collaborate with each other, and push each other forward. Denying this movement will only serve to disconnect our students from the educational society.
“There is life outside of the classroom...”
Having taken this entire Master’s program online, I can assure you that there is life outside of the classroom. The time is rapidly fading away when the traditional school day is based around the clock hours in a seat, and the calendar developed to help the farming families have time to plant and harvest. Educational opportunities no longer have to be fostered in a four-walled environment in a building that is over 100 years old.
One of the greatest benefits to learning online is the flexibility that it offers to the student. Sure, there are assignments that must be completed by a certain deadline, but those deadlines are not the end of a one-hour class session. Those deadlines are usually measured in days. Students are free to work on the required content when they are ready to learn. If that means they access the course at 3am, then so be it if that is when they feel they are ready to complete the work. We have long been too focused on controlling the schedule of our students, and have not been willing to be flexible, when best practices tell us that flexibility is key to the success of the diverse learners that we work with. In my experience, the flexibility of online courses has made my time spent on them more enriching because I have been able to work on them when I am in the best mindset to do so.
One of the other major benefits of working in an online environment is the richness of the resources that can be used for instruction. Our students spend hours on Facebook and Twitter when they are not at school. They are talking with friends and sharing funny online videos that they thought were "cool". Using this preexisting interest in online media content, we can capture the interest of our students using a medium that they are familiar with and enjoy. Online courses offer the opportunity to post up to the second updates on world events, and engage in conversation about those events as they are happening. We also can utilize the love of games that our students have to teach them content in a different way. By organizing your course in the virtual world, you are reaching the students where they already reside.
“The journey must continue...”
As for me, I have to tackle that question of “now what?” I see myself continuing my quest to educate others about the benefits of the immediate response generation. I intend to pursue further classes on the effects of social media in the world, both educationally and sociologically. To further this process, I intend to attend the MACUL conference each year to stay current with the trends in technology, and plan to continue to foster my relationship with the members of my PLN. Without my peer collaborators, I feel as though I will fall into isolation, which is the virus that can wipe teachers out of the field.
My passion as a learner has been reinvigorated over the course of my educational endeavors at Michigan State. I now have a better idea of what I want to do with my further studies, perhaps even pursuing a Doctoral degree in Educational Technology. There is still a ton of change that needs to occur in our educational system to ensure that we are best meeting the ever-changing needs of our students. I want to be the guy riding the proverbial horse, and leading that charge down the digital highway!