Techno Growth

I discovered an interesting item on the seat of my chair yesterday after class ended.

Carefully placed on the fabric sand dune of my chair was a wrinkled, hand-cut, old school advertisement for a new blog two elementary students have created.

Not only was it exciting for me to be "invited" to join in on their conversation about politics and rock 'n roll, but it also demonstrated to me how important it is to continue to discuss with students when/how technology is used appropriately and inappropriately.

I find that more and more students arrive each year with varying access to the latest "cool" gadget: cell phones with picture, movie, and texting capability, digital music players, digital camcorders and cameras, e-mail addresses and instant messaging accounts. We now have a wiki that all students have access to and I use this blog to share my thoughts with them and the world-at-large.

This wave of access to technology has prompted our building (state?) to hang "Turn off all Cell Phones" signs outside of classrooms during standardized testing sessions in order to avoid potential ringtone distractions. Who would've foreseen the need to hang these signs in elementary school hallways five-ten years ago?

As someone who has had to confiscate these devices over the years and the recipient of many good-intentioned e-mail chain letters warning about the latest computer virus, I've found that students have many unanswered questions about how to use their technology appropriately:

"What if I get a text message that's from someone I don't know?"
"Can I just "Google it?"
"I saved my response to the homework you posted online, but it's not there anymore!"
"I'll just have the computer remember my password."

I feel like some of the short discussions that we have in class centered around these topics of student interest just scratch the surface of what they need to know for the future, but for now, they will just have to do.