Technophiles and Technophobes

Yesterday, for Dr. Wilson's class, we read and discussed an article on the movement from standard to digital textbooks. Now, as I sit here at Starbucks blogging away on my Mini, I'm sure most would be able to discern that I am for the movement. I think it is absolutely necessary. Of course, I'm also for things like federal curriculum plans, which, as far as I know, the United States is one of only two industrialized nations to be without.

However, I do understand the concerns. Our generation is inadequately prepared for students who live and breathe technology. In an education system where cell phones aren't allowed in the classroom, it's hardly palpable to push for laptops. And teacher's education programs aren't helping. In my classes last semester, three out of five banned laptops from the classroom. The question is: if future teacher's aren't trusted to use technology to facilitate education, is it really a wonder that they would have negative impressions of the idea?

What we need are more creative solutions to the question of distractions in the classroom. College professors do not want laptops in the classroom because their students will be on facebook, or whatever: a moot point, in my mind. If students are distracted or uninterested in what is going on in the classroom, the solution isn't to remove all sources of distraction, which is, in my mind, impossible: the solution is to be a better teacher, and to hold students attention through more effective and environmentally appropriate mediums, plain and simple. Instead of telling students they can't bring laptops, teachers need to be trained to use these new tools in as an educational medium. Until teachers are trained to employ technology effectively in their own education, it is not so inappropriate that they wouldn't think it was possible. To that end, so long as we have course instruction to which the only changes have been made are updated editions of books, which fail to incorporate technology into classroom learning (to be differentiated from student work, which almost always requires the use of technology--unless of course there are professors that still have students write their papers with pen and paper), we will have teachers afraid of technology, and therefore unable to relate to and instruct a generation raised on and by it.