Emails to David 3: Digital Tools and This Teacher

Dear David:

I have a great deal of hard copy resources, in my veteran teacher cupboards, and a great deal of resources stored digitally, mostly in bookmarks and in digital copies of hard copy material. [All photos . . . come from a few keystrokes with Google. So . . . they are NOT my office.]

About 12 years ago, my internet access sped up at the school then employing me. And suddenly, I could access so much stuff of use to me as I prepared classes or just to enhance my scholarship. So I did access it. And I saved stuff digitally, but mostly I printed the material and put the material in 3-ring binders.

Very quickly, I found myself overwhelmed and, frankly, anxious about how much stuff there is "that I must read!"

I quickly noted that the Law of Diminishing Returns had kicked in and I hadn't really noticed. In other words, I had been teaching my classes well, introducing good stuff, changing the curriculum formally and ad hoc, etc. And I had been doing this partially because I had kept orderly . . . cupboards, cupboards which I culled nearly every summer.

I note that a cupboard can only hold so much stuff. The area may not be an ideal space for storing material in that it may be too big or too small. The space was given me and arbitrarily so. But the space is limited and so it does compel me to revisit and reassess material.


Digitally storing? The Cloud is nearly infinite and so I fear I could become more acquisitive and, thus, less discriminating and less thoughtful. I hoard as if hoarding alone increases my scholarship. Moreover, I spend more time with my face in my laptop. Sure, a book is just another technology to convey symbols, but my cupboards and shelves and my library and my desk and my reading chair and my bedstand and my favorite cafe and my dining table and my sofa require somehow more human interactions with material. But this may not seem sensible to 14 year old.

And, I know, it's the human who makes a book or a bedstand human. I'll humanize whatever tech you throw at me. In the future, some child might say, "You could only carry one book at a time and they could be kinda' heavy?!!? It's inhuman!"

The future beckons and it's not beckoning on paper.

g

Emails to David 2: Teaching and the Digital Literacy

David is our new and quite excellent Director of Educational Technology. Igor is the king of all hardware and software. I am the old teacher who recognizes that digital literacy may be harder for me . . . . This is the second of three letters.

Dear David:

I have found that one of my more difficult dilemmas in planning curriculum is how to choose from everything I might choose from. How do I create a reader in Econ from the enormous amount of reading I've done? How do I narrow it down? Even with good criteria, I'm left with too much and I have to cull and cull again. Same thing happens in any history class, less so in English, but there, too. And, of course, my reading generates not just reading assignment ideas, but project ideas and different ideas for Greg-centric or Student-centric lesson plans.

And this is just a matter of trying to choose among things I've read with a smattering of movies, videoes, podcasts thrown in.

How much more difficult will it be then, i.e., how much more time consuming will planning be if I add the capabilities and resources made available by digital tools? The prospect is a bit overwhelming! And that's just the prospect!

Now, it will seem less overwhelming to those for whom digital tools do not present other media, alternative media, i.e., people for whom digital tools exist seamlessly with . . . books and periodicals. It will seem less overwhelming to those for whom the technical proficiency already exists or at least the intuition exists which is necessary to develop the proficiency soon. So for someone like me, I really do have to make adjustments while the plane is flying.

Fortunately, the plane is not going down. No emergency here. But the plane IS going, as I see it, smoothly. I am certainly willing to risk some turbulence. And it may very be that kids in the near future will regard my classroom as a plane that can't get off the ground due to some old fashioned pedagogy if I don't learn to use the tech. Nonetheless, I do fear that I won't develop the intuition and that proficiency will always be beyond my grasp as new iterations of the digital tools keep racing to market. And I'm concerned about being even more overwhelmed by choices.

What Is This Blog All About? And What It's Not.

Musings, concerns, anecdotes of a 56-year-old teacher living in the SF Bay Area. This is NOT an anti-tech, Luddite rant. The Digital Revolution is here. I'm just awkward in welcoming it. Photo above: From Robert Frank's "The Americans."

Future of Books: Watch This One-Year-Old

Here is a video of a one-year-old who can't get a magazine to react to her touch the way an iPad does.

What does this portend?  It's obvious to me.  And I don't mind it.  Books will become ornaments, but too limited to actually "read" . . . because the reading, as the term is already understood, will be limited and physically clumsy.

I'm going to fly to Europe this summer and while I've always so looked forward to taking those two or three books with me -- not only because of my choice of authors, but also because of the physicality, the tactile sensation of "settling in" with a book --  I will, nonethless, on this trip take an iPad with a those two or three books, and the New Yorker, and a film or two, in it. 

And just in case there are tech glitches, I'll take a book, real book, with me.  And I'll find out where in Paris I can buy English language books.  Just in case mind you. 

Letters to David 1: Digital Revolution vs. Old Man

David is our new and quite excellent Director of Educational Technology. Igor is the king of all hardware and software. I am the old teacher who recognizes that digital literacy may be harder for me . . . .


Dear David:

It may be that I've had an inordinate amount of tech difficulties -- perhaps for 6 years now, but certainly for these past couple of weeks -- because I actually try to use a lot of the technology, but I don't think I'm the least bit intuitive about how to navigate/negotiate/trouble-shoot it. And I'm never going to be intuitive about it. I'm always amazed at the solutions shared with me.

I DO try to follow directions, fix it myself, etc., sometimes, but often I have no idea what the problem is and no intuition about how to fix it. I think I am patient with the glitches -- ask Igor. And I'm generally told that the problem, "is not you, Greg, it's something weird with your" whatever it might be. (Ex.: No one seems to know how to permanently rid myself of the "Save this document" message from new Word docs. Having succeeded in the past, I followed the directions in Tech Cafe. Didn't work. Student tech crew member Lindsay worked on it last this summer. No avail. Michaela tried two weeks ago. No luck. ) I also remember or make note of how to fix many things. I also prioritize: what do I need fixed NOW and what can wait (Ex.: I've not asked Igor for help on the "Save this Document" conundrum. Not yet anyway. And another example: suddenly Ctrl-6 does not take me to my FC calendar, but to another one. This can wait.) Yet, I suspect others are more self-reliant and seem to know what to do.

I realize that the learning curve never flattens because the tech/software/whatever just keeps coming at us and once we master one thing, we're gonna have to move on to the next. Still, I have to wonder, why are we using Google docs when FC or Word seem perfectly suited to sending me a list? Even if things go as planned, I have to open an email, click on a link, sign in to something, then click on a document. Why not just give me the info in the body of the email?



I am an old teacher and while I'm willing to learn new tricks, and even enthusiastically engage these new tricks, I might not be as adept at it. I really don't think I'm the least bit intuitive about how to navigate/negotiate/trouble-shoot it. And as I noted, I am willing to commit to tech for tech's sake just to develop the proficiency necessary for imaginative use of tech. And I know that in order to realize the benefits of some new tech (and I gather Google docs is fairly new, at least to some of us at Urban), then there will be some stumbling. And I know that in my role here as an older teacher and a recent Admin member, I have to sort of set an example in attitude and engagement with tech. I never, ever badmouth tech with other faculty members or students.

But what I need now that classes have started, insofar as it's no longer summer and no longer faculty workshop week, is stuff that does not require a too-lengthy bit of trouble-shooting. The kids are here now and I need time to teach and assess.

g