In the last year or so, I have come to cringe whenever I hear the phrase "technology integration." Originally, it meant a very specific type of education. In recent years, any activity in which kids are in front of computer screens is called "technology integration." Even activities very different from what was originally envisioned as technology integration (or teaching with computers) is labeled integration, and as we have named every "kids-front-in-of-screens" activity as technology integration the care we take in planning to make sure we are using technology to study authentic and complex problems has taken less attention as well.
(Yes, I understand this is not true of every school... but I think in the last decade... as we have been increasingly measured by tests, we have seen the return of proposals to use computers to teach to the test, and that is taking us away from what we as middle school educators know and what educational technologist learned back in the last century.)
Next month, I will be giving this presentation at VTFest, the annual educational technology conference in Vermont:
No comments:
Post a Comment