When it comes to the world wide web, so much has changed in such a small amount of time. When I was in middle school, AOL Instant Messager was the name of the game, with our classwork primarily being pencil and paper (unless we were going to the computer lab). When I was in high school, Facebook was becoming more popular, but all of our work was still done in that classic pencil and paper format.
Now, roughly 10 years since I’ve graduated high school, the district I teach in is one-to-one with Chromebooks. Students utilize Canvas and the internet everyday for various activities — classwork, gaming, videos, and more. Being pushed into this new generation of learning, my classroom (and the classrooms of all else in education) has had to adapt. Instead of a focus on handwriting, there is a focus on web etiquette. Instead of using a card catalog to cite sources, we use web-based citation generators. We still play some live games, but Kahoot! and Blooket are other class favorites that rely on students’ Chromebooks or phones to participate.
While it can be overwhelming to have so much change so quickly, there is a part of this new stage of learning that excites me. My students can make global connections that were once more difficult, and we can watch a huge variety of performances thanks to YouTube. Not all learning should occur on the Chromebook, but using it as a supplement to the classroom can only further engage our students as we move further and further into the future.
Brittany –
Reading your timeline of changes makes me feel even older! My first “computer” was a Brother typewriter that had a miniscule window that allowed me to see what I had written and hit the “backspace” button instead of using the typewriter “eraser” stuff! The problem was that I was a faster typist than the typewriter! You are right though, the changes in the last year and a half have been amazing. The future is definitely here and it’s exciting to see what comes next in education!
(I love the gif!)
Chris
I think I may be a bit older than you, as I see your reference to Facebook becoming popular while you were in high school. I still remember there being just two computers available for student use in our school IMC when I was in high school. The printers printed on the paper with the tractor-feed edges along each side for easy feeding through the line-by-line dot matrix machine. I guess you could say some things have changed!
Hi Brittany,
Like you, I am amazed at how much technology has taken over schools in such a short amount of time. I use a similar LMS to Canva called Schoology that allows me to push out learning activities to students on their iPads instead of spending my plan period making copies. My students love playing Kahoot or Blooket even though every now and then they like to go old school and play Jeopraphy!
Thanks for sharing!
-Kristy
Hi Brittany,
I can hear Squidward saying “future” from your gif, I can’t stop laughing! I can completely relate to how you felt in your post – that it may at first feel extremely overwhelming but once you give the new applications and websites a chance, they can actually be really enjoyable, relatable and relevant to not just the students, but the teacher too. I remember feeling how frustrated I was citing sources back in the late 90’s – something I can gladly say I am happy for my students knowing amazing technology like this exists now.