This image has circulated heavily in the Twittersphere recently: http://www.teachingquality.org/content/technology-tool-not-learning-outcome Take a look and read the blog post accompanying it. You might also skim some of the comments made by others. In 100-125 words: What’s your reaction to it? Do you agree? Disagree? Why or why not? Draw on relevant classroom experiences you have had.
It is unfortunate that Bill Ferriter doesn’t see that his ‘wrong’ answers can often be the tool for completing the ‘right’ answers. If we are asking students to raise awareness, why not do so with the use of a blog? He is missing the very point of what integration is. I am not asking my students to merely create a Prezi, the Prezi is a virtual tool used to communicate an idea that is hopefully thorough and thought out and uses the course content. I feel his argument is similar to my own teaching pedagogy about technology and learning and that technology should be used as a tool to learn and share about their learning, and that technology should not be used just for the sake of using it. As a teacher who feels strongly about the use of technology, I spend a lot of time thinking about why certain technologies work, not just finding ways to use it just to do so. It is frustrating to think of a teacher using a SmartBoard, but then not allowing students to touch it. Technology is a very real part of what our students will face in their futures. They absolutely have to be allowed to use technologies to share, create and learn. For example, at work if I create a Prezi or a PowerPoint, it is not merely just to create a presentation. I am using it as a tool to share an idea. Could I stand at the front of a room and merely speak the information? Sure, but what a presentation does is connect to different learning styles. I am still speaking, but it also showing things visually. He is dead wrong when he says that using technology does not help with student motivation. In my own experience, the ability to use technology in the classroom mirrors their life outside of school much more than reading a textbook. Students are eager to use technology because often times they feel confident about it because they typically know more about it than the adults in their life. Even Richardson shared this sentiment in the first chapter of his book.
He is absolutely right that students should use technology to do everything that he feels are the ‘right’ answer, however how does he recommend that they do this without what he calls ‘outcomes’ rather than ‘tools’. He is mistaken to believe that any of those things are merely ‘outcomes’ the learning is the outcome and the tools are ways in wish students can express and expand on those outcomes in order to teach others, create change, join groups, and all of the other things he is saying are the ‘right’ answers. I love the fact that I can teach a student how to create a webpage in order to create a blog so that they can share about the content. This goes to the very heart of TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy, Content, and Knowledge). I do not think any teacher is really instructing students merely on how to make a blog or a Prezi, they are teaching them subject matter while teaching them how to use tech tools and for me that is the very heart of what I strive to do with students. He shares nothing about his own experience with this and seeing the difference in student motivation when they are creating something tangible with a tech tool.
I can see maybe see where his argument was headed, but he missed the mark by saying they are outcomes versus tools for completing the right answers.
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