Monday, July 4, 2011

How is TPACK like Sex Ed?

Response to "8 ways to better integrate technology in education"
This blogger/tweeter gives some advice to educators on how to better bring technology into the classroom in ways that are actually beneficial to learning, as opposed to just being exciting bells and whistles that distract from actual content. Besides that main point, D.Norman makes another claim. If we allow technology to fully enter the school, the author claims that educators will then be able to not only integrate more authentic day to day experiences into the classroom (which betters student learning and retention), but they will be able to facilitate conversation on proper usage, which kids are missing out on. (For example, all of the buzz that's been happening lately re: social network bullying...). Technology for Norman includes anything from cellphones, to ipods, to interactive gaming, to the more commonly thought of integrable technologies such as the commonly banned facebook, youtube, etc. From the author's perspective, it makes no sense to ban certain sites and technology from the classroom, since kids already are using these to begin with.
Bringing it back to the topic question:
Technology surrounds kids, it surrounds us, it has become a very real part of our day to day lives. Similar to sex education, students will likely engage in risky or uneducated behaviors if not given proper guidance. So rather than delude ourselves by acting as though by not talking about the subject, students will remain safely ignorant, we have to integrate teachable moments regarding these real subjects if we want to prepare our students for dilemmas they might/will face.

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