SOS

Technology is a funny thing and at the beginning of one of my classes last week it caused disaster to strike! We had a presentation from a grad student, who was required to present to us for a part of one of her classes and was being evaluated on it. When she got to the front of the class however, the projector would not turn on and the power point she had prepared could not be displayed. She called the colleges tech support but they would be able to come and fix the problem until at least halfway through our class period. Without missing a beat, she smiled and told us that we were going to conduct the class in an old fashioned manner, and proceeded to modify her notes and activities so that they were things that could be written on the board "old-school".

Although she handled the situation flawlessly, I have to wonder if I would have been as smooth. This incident got me thinking about what I would do in that situation, and I realized that I haven't taken many notes that weren't copied right off of a powerpoint. I've also never given a presentation like that without using powerpoint. Needless to say, I would have had a very difficult time continuing my lesson if I had been in the grad students boat because I wouldn't have thought to write my main points out on the board while I went.

This is one of the first times that it has really struck me that I am a part of the 'gamification' generation that we talked about in class this week. I grew up learning more information than I realized through games, power-points, and technology. The research we have been reading in class suggests that this may not be the best way to retain information, and the projector incident also goes to show that technology is not a "cure-all". This creates an interesting conundrum considering how much the younger generations have become accustomed to learning with technology, and there are no concrete answers on how to balance this problem. Nonetheless, the grad student saved the day by demonstrating an equal amount of skill in teaching with and without technology (which ties nicely in with the TPACK model I discussed in an earlier post), and I hope that by keeping in mind the occasional pitfalls of technology I too would be able to respond appropriately!