The Merging of Two Stories

Perspective. A word defined as "a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; point of view". Perspective allows for people to be able to conduct intellectual conversations with others and to uphold opinions on subjects further allowing us to make intelligent decisions on particular subjects. But to what extent does perspective hinder our ability to see the full picture? If we become too entrenched in our own perspective, do we become perspective-less to other perspectives?

Upon reflecting on the lecture this past week, we discussed the importance of story through education. Story being our past story as students in the highschool system, our present story as future teachers in university and our future story being teachers in the Ontario highschool system. As education continues to progress, Professor Drake stated that "we are the age group to be able to make substantial change in the education system" and that this change will happen through technology. But as students having grown up in an education system with very limited access to technology in the classroom, does this old story hinder our perspective on accepting the future story of enabling limitless technology in the classroom in order to further our student's ability to learn? Furthermore, the perspective of education policy makers, much older than myself, also grew up in a schooling system that did not have access to technology. Therefore, will their old story and their perspective of their own education influence their decisions and their policy making for the future and the future story of integrating technology into the classroom. This essentially questions when technology reformers and on the opposite side of the spectrum, conservative policy makers, will be able to work together in order to create a story that allows for technology to become a positive attribute that will allow for the learning capabilities of students to grow in the classroom environment. 

Currently being placed in the education system myself, I generally think that I am a technologically savvy person. I have a phone, I know how to “tweet”, instagram, Facebook, and now even blog! However, that being said, this past week of lecture frankly scared me. Learning about these students in elementary and high schools now using technology frequently in order to expand their learning capacities amazes me. Some concerns that I have on this subject are firstly, how am I as a future educator supposed to learn all of these technology methods for teaching students? Is this something that as undergraduate teachers we are going to be taught, or because it is a new field, will we be self-teaching ourselves? Also, if technology is forever changing, how are we supposed to keep up in order to full capitalize on using technology in the classroom. Another matter that scares me about technology is the fact that because my students are growing up in a classroom and education that is using technology from early primary grades that for the most part my future students are going to be way more technologically savvy then myself. Although I do believe that students have information and knowledge to be able to teach the teacher new perspectives, I think that it is up to the teacher to be able to have the final say at how the students should be taught and frankly I don’t want to seem outdated by all of this technology! (Seeing as I’m aiming to be a cool and fair teacher of course). Therefore, my ultimate thought with this is how will I be able to adopt my old story as growing up with limited technology into a new story that allows for myself to be technologically savvy in order to best teach my students a progressive and interactive education and further be able to shift my perspective to understanding how technology works in all parts of the classroom? While this shift in perspective sounds like an easy change, adapting new ideas and trying to forget the old might not be easy, but as a future teacher, and with education and technology forever changing, I’m up for the challenge! 

Make sure to check out this cool article from Huffington Post on integrating technology into the classroom! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darrell-west/five-ways-teachers-can-us_b_3228851.html