Integrating 21st Century Technology in a 20th Century School

When I first read the introduction of Web 2.0 I was a little intimidated. I thought to myself “What have I been missing?” because I really wasn’t familiar with the term Web 2.0. Then I started reading the articles and realized that I knew about much of the content but didn’t assign a term that described it all. As I read the article on E-learning I realized how I was already beginning to incorporate these tools into my classroom and also how I had considered others in my pursuit for technology tools to support my instruction.

While I didn’t start a blog personally until this class, I am familiar with them and follow some online. I teach a class called Senior Research Project and one group of students is trying to create a social and academic media site for our high school where students can collaborate and post ideas and questions in a familiar environment. I support their efforts in creating this learning community. This group is working out the mechanics of the site but they are also thinking about the ethical or privacy issues with this site. It is interesting to listen to their discussions about how private or public to make this site. I am the first teacher that has become a member and it will be interesting to see if the students will communicate differently knowing a teacher is following their dialogs.

Since last year I have been toying with the idea of “flipping” my classroom in AP Biology and have been investigating podcast services to help me facilitate this flip. The idea of having students watch my podcasts at home in the evenings for their homework and then spend class time reinforcing content with activities and labs really intrigues me. I have consulted with my students as I explore this idea. As well as getting the students’ feedback, there are so many things to consider besides the basic use of technology. How long should the podcasts last? Will students actually watch them at home at night and what do I do if they don’t?  AP Biology is such a content intensive course to teach and I want to make sure that I am not sacrificing content at the expense of technology.  I do like the idea of student generated podcasts for projects or even reviews of units. I think my students would be more likely to watch a podcast of their peers and have it sustain their interest longer than if they were required to watch a broadcast of their instructor disseminating information.

All of the Web 2.0 tools are exciting and I have to be selective in the use of them in my classroom. My biggest obstacle is our district itself. We have a strong filtering system with any internet usage within the district. We are not able to access many websites even though it would be for instructional use. Our district does not allow access to social network sites at all so in school access to blogs, learning communities etc are blocked. As the DC of my science department, I am allowed to have unblocked internet access but there are still sub-layers of filtering that I have to deal with. Even with an unfiltered computer, I still have to abide with the usage contract of the district. I think this will be a stumbling block for many school districts as we move even further into technological tools to use in education. We can spend millions of dollars for devices such as iPads but we are stymied by an archaic idea that students should have limited access to the internet where a wealth of information and interesting educational tools are located.