Now what?

As a final year, graduating Education student, where do I go from here. I've learned so many different strategies regarding the use of technology in the classroom, the benefits and risks, and multiple reasons to use it.

But now what? How do I take this new knowledge and put it into practice?

The most obvious "now what" is to use this new knowledge in a classroom. Not quite that simple, but that is the goal. I'm in the middle of the application process, pulling together reference letters, editing my resume and editing it some more, creating my e-portfolio...

I'm so excited to use what I have learned - to promote technological literacy, to teacher proper use of technology, to engage my students, to increase learning, and more. I feel well-equipped not just to use the technology we have learned about, but to experiment with and implement new technology as it comes along.

In the meantime though, as I finish up my post-secondary education, before I find myself using technology in a class, I can be sure to do two things - First, I can practice the use of technology in my placement class. While every school has different forms of technology and different levels of technology integration, each place is a new challenge and a new opportunity to use whatever technology is available in new and authentic learning experiences. Secondly, I can, by way of websites such as Edudemic and Twitter, continually become aware of the new education technology that comes out, and new research on the way that it can be used in the classroom.

Technological Literacy

Ninety minutes. Camera. Tripod. Two AA batteries. SD Card. Paper. Popsicle sticks. Markers. More markers. Scissors. More paper. An ipod for writing the script. Many laughs. Collaboration. 

Making a common craft video is fun. A lot of work, especially in such a short time period, but definitely fun. During our last Technology and Education class, a group of four of us, given the task to create a common craft video, quickly picked (too big of) a topic - the plot of Up - and got to work. One writing the script. Three drawing and cutting furiously. We ran out of time, and showed the second take to the class. Not perfect by any means, but definitely fun. (Not linked here, simply because I don't have a copy...)

This exercise started me thinking about the different ways I could use common craft in my own classroom. In previous blog posts, I've discussed one of the benefits of technology as being student engagement. Engaging this form of technology myself, as a student, gives me the ability to see the way that students could be drawn into this project. Students (I am thinking of the junior grades now) can exercise their imagination and creativity, not only in creating a script but also in developing the characters for it.
A project like this will exercise various literacy skills (viewing, representing, speaking listening, reading, writing) in a new way. It will also incorporate a new literacy - that of technology, using and operating different equipment.

This new literacy of technology is becoming more and more prevalent in the classroom and in everyday life. That second aspect makes the first one important. If daily life is requiring students to interact with technology more and more, then school - the preparatory grounds for life - ought to reflect that. While I do not advocate for an entirely technological approach in the classroom, I do believe that the presence of technology in this century must be something that is thought about and engaged by educators, in order to help students work well in this new digital age.

Common craft videos, the use of GoogleDocs for collaboration, digital art and media projects, and the simple use of a word processor for written work are all ways that teachers can help develop a responsible sense of technological literacy in their class.