Technology

Photo: Sue Houston

Integration of technology in education seems to be all the rage lately.  Honestly, I was quite a skeptic not too long ago.  Perhaps that skepticism stems from a childhood of enduring one educational fad after another, from “SRA’s” (I always felt behind) to the “open classroom concept” (what a chaotic disaster) to “self directed learning” (gosh did I get lost in 7th grade math).

After 25 years of teaching high school I have to say that the only real “magic” we have to offer our students is simply the fact that we care about them.  That empathy, compassion and genuine interest in their success is the single most motivating and empowering tool we have in our tool kits.

So when my Head of School posed the question to the faculty a few years ago “If you had the opportunity how would you use technology in the classroom?” my reaction was immediate and definitely negative.  With too much screen time already in kids’ lives, all I could imagine was how more screens in my classroom would interfere with human interaction.   If you want to read the long version, you can go to the first post in this blog here, but the short version is that my initial suspicions turned out to be wrong.  In fact now I’m finding that technology is not only enhancing students’ learning experience but also is enriching the human interaction piece as well, all much to my surprise!