Technology Makes Me Happy

I don't like doing things more than once.  I loathe transferring information from handwritten to digital format. My patience level is fairly low, so I want information quickly. I think that these personality quirks have been crucial in the development of my love of technology.  Fortunately, technology has evolved quickly to calm my quirks!

In education, sometimes I feel as though we continue to retread, rename and attempt to reinvent the wheel.  The wheel is SO 20th century!  Why are we not working on our hovercraft and jet packs?  Let's throw away the wheel and move past "that's the way we've always done it."  The way we have always done it is the problem.

Today's students are learning.  They are learning critical thinking skills in the games they play, including some physics and geometry from Angry Birds.  They are learning about the world and current events from Twitter.  They are learning about personalities, marketing and business from Facebook.  And anything else they want to learn?  They just Google it.

My hope is that educational leaders will use these technology pieces.  They are the hovercraft and jet packs, or at least the beginnings of them.  Why oppose gameification of classes?  Why block smart phones and personal devices?  We take away the way students learn outside of our classrooms and yet expect them to conform to the outdated wheel.

Technology makes me happy.  Embrace it!  You just might like it too.