Pedagogy before Technology

 This assignment is for LSSL 5391, Digital Technology for School Librarians, with Dr .Gross at SHSU. I read through the resources listed at the bottom before writing this post.

  

I am an older Graduate School student. I belong to one of the generations who has seen the most changes in technology over our lives. When have had to accept the changes and learn to function while the world literally changed around us.  When I was in elementary school, we had "Computer Class" once a month, starting in 4th grade. The screens were black and the letters were made of green blocks. We did not use computers in class to complete assignments in middle school. The only class in high school I ever used computers for was in Newspaper production. We used the program Word Perfect to type up the news stories into 3 columns, but we still actually laid out the newspaper, the stories and the borders by hand. One issue took weeks to produce, so we only published it once a month. I loved the smell of the rubber cement we used to create the paper, using rulers to make sure the columns of the layout were spaced correctly and the time I spent literally hunched over the counter and tables creating the newspaper by hand. I was in college as the internet became popular and cell phones became affordable and common... for PHONE CALLS or texts only!  Cells phones had limits on the number of minutes you talk in a month, and you were charged per text you wrote, plus the "airtime" it took to send the text. Not only was the sender of the text charged, but the receiver of the text was charged too.  Phones did not have keyboards. You had to spell out words by hitting a number multiple times until the letter popped up. Texts took a long time to write. Now we carry can entire computer in our hands, like what The Jetsons had.   

I have lived through reel to reel, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes, Cds (came out my senior year in high school), downloaded music and now streaming.  I have lived through only having 4 TV stations that stopped broadcasting at midnight, not having cable in my neighborhood, going to the movies being a special occasion, VHS tape and VCRs (Top Gun was the first VHS tape my parents bought and it cost over $100), Laser Disks, DVDs and Blue-Ray, Cable in college, renting DVDs through Netflix, Ipads and Kindles, and now streaming services that run 24 hours, 7days a week for 365 days a year. I have seen grocery and retail stores move from the cashier having to enter every item code and price by hand into a register, people, to flat panel scanners, to computers and scanning guns to self-check out. From writing checks or paying cash, to credit cards or debit cards to digital banking and Card/digital Payments Only.  

However, I am the odd duck on my campus. I have always embraced the technological changes in education. I have always stayed current on the trends, apps and programs and am one of the most Tech-confident teachers on my campus. I have many coworkers who are younger than I am, who are afraid to use anything except PowerPoint presentations for their lessons. The teacher will read from the PowerPoint as the student fill in blanks on a worksheet and the teachers feel this is "interactive" learning. It is not. This is only meeting the lowest levels on Bloom's and is nowhere near the expectations of the digital Blooms taxonomy (Churches 2008).

My current junior high students have never not had a cell phone or iPad in their hands. Many teachers think students now days are born "Tech Literate." My experience is my students are not truly "Tech Literate" as they are "Google Literate" and "Gaming Literate."  Where I see technology as a tool for my job, they see it as entertainment.  The average 13 to 14-year-old I teach knows how to text, use Facetime and other communication apps, and how to Google for answers. We still need to teach the students how to use the apps and programs as a tool for learning. It is our responsibility to teach students how to tell the validity of a website and how to check for "Fake News."  We must teach students that not everything they see online is true, that they need to research and learn what is correct and what is wrong.  The students must be taught that Wikipedia is not the gospel and the information can be edited by users. We must teach the students how to write a professional email and how to function in the real digital world. I have heard numerous teachers complain they assigned their classes an assignment and only received web pages copied, pasted into a word document and turned in as their own work ... but were the students taught that plagiarism was illegal and how to actually complete that assignment when it was handed out?  If the teachers are not taking the time to teach the students how to properly use technology, then it is the librarian's duty to. Librarians can bridge the gap and help students learn the necessary skills and programs they will need to function in society.  Librarians can also be the connection for teachers and technology. Librarians need to lead by example.  

We have to be Future Ready campuses. Technology has a place in the classroom as a tool for learning and as a foundation to build learning. We have to be able to meet our students where the technology is and how to function properly using technology as it changes around us. However, I think there should be traditional "Pencil and Paper" assignments as well. Students need to know how to continue with work if the power goes out for 2 weeks due to a hurricane or other issue. Students will also need to understand that the world should not stop if the internet goes down. They need to know how to be "Old School" as well as "Cutting Edge" as they grow up and enter into the workforce.    

References:

Bloom’s digital taxonomy. Common Sense Education. (n.d.). https://www.commonsense.org/education/videos/blooms-digital-taxonomynw
Clarity Innovations. (n.d.). Toolkits. K-12 Blueprint. https://www.k12blueprint.com/toolkits 
Churches, A. (2008, May 26). Colorado Community College Online - Finding Opportunities. https://www.ccconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Churches_2008_DigitalBloomsTaxonomyGuide.pdf 
Marist College. (2019, August 21). The first marist mindset list if released. https://www.marist.edu/w/marist-news-the-first-marist-mindset-list-is-released 
Schrock, K. (2022, October 20). Bloomin’ apps. Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything. Retrieved June 5, 2024 from https://www.schrockguide.net/boomin-apps.html