How far have we come so far?

Honestly? I came into this course hoping to learn about some new tools... tools that I could bring back to my board... my position... to the students I interact with. What I've found, is that we are all focusing on the same subset of tools to enable learning independence and nurture creativity in our classroom.

Does that mean that we are stagnating? Or does it mean that we have come to see that we shouldn't live in an "app for that" education system where one tool does one job. I look at everything I've done in my past role as a curriculum consultant, and the biggest impact for student engagement and learning with technology has come with the Google Apps for Education platform. 

Yes.... Office does the same things and is the tool of choice for businesses and yes... I do think it is a better product... BUT and a large BUT... it isn't a better tool for our students (and me too). I don't want to spend more than 20 minutes explaining how to use a tool. I think if it takes longer than this, students better be in a technology class. I want the focus to be on what the student is learning. I want to them to achieve curriculum goals while at the same time, being able to show off their learning in a variety of different and exciting ways. Google does this... and from the sounds of it, by reading the posts and comments of others, many others in the class see the same things.  

We are all in this education thing together. We need to focus less on the tools and more on the what are you doing with it. What is your end goal? Is the technology necessary for what you are doing or is it just a distraction? Are you assuming that just because you are using technology in the classroom that students are learning better or engaged... I hope not. 

To Tech or Not to Tech... That is not a question anymore.

Necessary for some, good for all.

I've had a great teaching career. I've had my own classes and for the past 7 years have been lucky enough to help out in classes from K-12... even got to teach a few university instructors along the way.

Nothing, however, rings more true than the statement above. Necessary for some, good for all became the mantra of the IT4 Learning Team at the District School Board of Niagara. Special Education focused tools such as Word Q and Read & Write were good for everyone. There was always a tool that could be of some use to students, whether they were in Grade 1 or Grade 12. Training a classroom of students how to use the text to speech feedback meant that the student that needed it to read didn't look any different than the students who could use it to improve their writing skills... 

The flipside also applies when integrating technology into a class for the purpose of being assistive. Tools like Office, Google Docs, Video Creation Tools, etc. are then tools for a regular streamed classroom. They, again, are tools for everyone. Just because the label assistive technology is applied to specific software, does not mean that all of the other available software can't be assistive. 

All of our students need to belong. All of our students need an outlet for creativity. All of our students need to be treated fairly. Maybe the statement "necessary for some, good for all" shouldn't be just a statement. It should be an ideal. It should be the norm... or maybe it should just be abolished and replaced by "necessary for all." Maybe this is what needs to be said to abolish the notion that our special needs students are any different than any other student.