My school division this week is hosting a conference for it’s school committee members. These are the elected officials from the 47 (?) schools in our division who, along with the principal, sit as an advisory board at each school site.
My class and I were asked to skype in to this conference to talk about how we use technology. To add a bit “zing” to our presentation, while we were conducting the live call, they also set up another screen at the conference site and watch as kids from both classes in the Idea Hive dropped their thoughts on a wall about using technology in the classroom.
You can take a look at the entire wall here, but a few comments from the kids showed that it’s all about motivation:
” I think working on computers changes work from what people want to avoid, to something people can’t wait for!”
“It is important to have technology in the classroom, so that we, the students, can communicate with people all over the world…”
“I think that having technology in classrooms is good because it helps us learn new things, like how to connect to people all over the world. It lets us communicate by texts or by skype.”
“We live in a global community that the whole world is a part of on the Internet. What we do in class gives us the knowledge and the experience that we will need to work in this global community.”
We see (once again) that this really isn’t about the technology at all. While we couldn’t do the things we do without it, the network and the connection is where the value is. This is true even if you’re 12 -14.
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