Chapter 9

I was so glad that this chapter was included in the book because I am always looking for practical applications to conceptual information. My favorite idea is that the most important implication for technology in the classrooms of the future is a greater emphasis on collaboration among students and teachers. I love that we have worked together in small groups and individually in our class this semester as a model for using the technologies with our students. By doing these projects ourselves, we will be more apt to see practical, everyday applications for the tools in our classrooms.

Further, my favorite “Big Shift” is hands down #4: “Teaching is Conversation, Not Lecture”. What a novel idea! It is amazing that it has taken so long for the field of education to evolve in this way, but I truly do agree that technology will push the field into this mode in the near future, even more so than it already has. For example, more and more teachers are coming out of graduate school with a student-centered approach to teaching, and are ready to use technology to better reach those students. These new teachers are most often very outgoing and willing to draw in their colleagues, asking them to come on board for new uses of technology. The result is a widespread change from the old, boring, non-engaging lecture style teaching that our poor parents and grandparents had to suffer through. Yea!