Transitioning into Technology: A Librarian’s Reflections on Her School’s 1-to-1 Laptop Program

As my colleague Lynn Mittler noted a few weeks ago, we have not made the transition to a 1-to-1 tablet program without injury.  Students and teachers alike continue to stumble over power cords, but what seems to have become a more urgent condition is technology fatigue. I have heard many students bemoaning the fact that they have to write yet another blog entry or that they have to collaborate on yet another wiki.  "When am I ever going to use this again?" is a refrain heard in classrooms around campus. 

In many ways, I see this fatigue as a sign of great success; our dedicated and hard-working teachers have incorporated technology into their classrooms like they incorporate grammar or vocabulary.  For many teachers, technology has become a part of their daily curriculum, and I am impressed by the success of the transition. 

However, this technology fatigue is also thought-provoking.  Isn't learning with technology supposed to be fun and exciting?  At least more fun than learning grammar?  Where are all the smiling students, tapping away on their tablets, learning within social networks, developing voices via blogging, and creating their own content? 

Perhaps they are at home, updating their facebook page, uploading their pictures to flickr, creating music and art online, and gaming with their friends who live a suburb over?

I can't help but think that the technology fatigue (aside from being typical teenage moaning and groaning) is directly related to students' difficulty in seeing the relevance of technology in their academic lives.  Technology in their social lives makes sense.   Our students talk via facebook, play via gaming sites, create via Garageband.  They choose how to use the technology and make it an essential part of their lives outside of school.  Of course, part of the fun of these technologies is that they lack authority figures placing limits and evaluating results. 

We will never be able to compete with that kind of fun.  What we can do, however, is learn from our students' experience with technology in their social lives.  We can allow our students some choice and authority regarding which technology to use and when.  We can introduce and implement technology that makes sense in their academic lives.  Perhaps most importantly, we can help articulate why these skills are so important-not just in their current academic lives, but in college and beyond.  Luckily, many of our teachers have already learned how to do just that.

Some of our teachers have tapped into their students' excitement about technology in inspiring ways.  Our AP History classes use a Ning page to mimic facebook for famous nineteenth-century reformers, who post profiles and communicate with each other.  English classes use a wiki in conjunction with Lord of the Flies to compete in a teacher-controlled game of survival.  Another English assignment encourages creativity and critical thinking about narrative by having students develop short online graphic novels.  A Geometry project focused on blogging elicited great conversations about Creative Commons and students' rights to control their own creations.  These projects are authentic learning experiences that capitalize on and develop students' prior knowledge of technology-and they help students make sense of technology as an essential part of their academic lives.

Our students don't use facebook because it's high-tech.  They use facebook because it serves a purpose.  If we can help students to understand that using technology serves a very important purpose, we will alleviate some of the technology fatigue students are feeling.   We will also grow students who are 21^st century citizens in both their social and academic lives, with no need to ask the question, "When am I ever going to use this again?" 

 

Katie Voss - Upper School Librarian - MICDS