This week was great. Not like, “easy-peasy” great, but like “filled with tiny moments that I saw great things happening” great. You know, like “Saturday morning sleeping in” great.
Technology connecting a student from home into the classroom. To hear the teacher read, connect with classmates, and participate.
Technology connecting students to a research ship off the coast of Canada. To talk to a scientist. To see videos from deep depths of the ocean.
Technology connecting a teacher and her newborn baby to say hello to her class. To say hello and introduce her newest family member to her kids at school.
Technology as a tool to support readers and writers in alternative ways. To remind us that our learning differences are nothing more than that – differences.
Technology to capture that split second of joy in a learning moment when something magical happens that can’t really be explained in words, but sometimes, when we’re lucky, is caught in a photo.
Technology as a way for students to share their story. To capture the good they see in the school. Because their view is from a different perspective and to honor that? We honor who they are.
Technology as a powerful magnet for collaboration, because when you are running a morning news show, you rely on each other in the most authentic way.
Technology as a way for me to know my best friend had signed her closing papers on her new home while I sat in traffic on Friday afternoon.
And while I was lost in all of that? I had technology to tap my wrist and remind me of every single meeting and appointment I needed to rush off to. Thank you, Apple.
Technology is whatever we make of it. I get worried when we see Instagram in education as a place to sell stuff to each other, blogs as a place to advertise the latest packet for our classroom, Twitter as a place to “gain followers,” and “build sales,” or devices in the classroom as “in the way” or something to collect at the door. I can’t stand by and watch education be turned into some sales floor where we trade dollars for helping each other. To me, that’s a mistake. A mistake far bigger than we can afford to make.
Because then we are missing the very best thing in it all.
Human connection.
Sharing.
Open giving to each other to make the world better.
When we miss the point, we miss out on it all.
Everything.
The point of the technology is never the technology… it’s the people. The connections. The learning.
