It’s Not About the Box

Clarence looks around his classroom and sees lots of different boxes.

My classroom is beginning to look more like a mish mash each day rather then a coherent arrangement of technology. I used to dream of the day when I would have 20 new white iBooks to work with. All of the students connected and sitting prettily behind their clean new boxes.

Now I have two old desktops (2 others have died this year), the one tiny Asus laptop ( still waiting on my other 10), eight students who bring their own laptops from home in a rainbow of Dell, Gateway, Toshiba and Sony colours, as well as two students who now realize they can use their new iPods they got for Christmas as more then containers for music.

The point is just that the kids and I are both realizing more each day that the technology is just a channel, a pipe, a point of access to what is really important; the connection, the information, the people out there.

When it comes to instructional technology, we really do worry too much about this box or that one.

In most of our high schools, where there are too few computers for students to use, iPods, cell phones, and personal laptops are banned, thus eliminating many potential learning tools from the classroom.

Instead of narrowing our focus to specific boxes, we need to use whatever tools are available to give our kids connectivity, enhance learning and get the job done.

education, technology, cell phone, ipod