What To Do When Technology Isn't Cutting It

Here in the 21st century, we like our tablets on our wrist and our conversations through a screen. It is inevitable that technology is creeping into every aspect of your life, whether you like it or not. For some little people in elementary school, this means a monumental change has occurred, especially in the public schools.

In an "ideal"classroom today, every student has their own Macbook or iPad, along with unlimited access to the school's wifi connection. The district IT department has seamlessly set up everything so that there is no room for error or crashing. The teacher of said classroom is fully educated on the latest and greatest means of classroom technology integration.

But...

What if the district has yet to accumulate enough funds for students to have that technology?
What if the school has yet to been equipped with internet that can handle 500-1000 students?
What if budget cuts have forced the IT department to cut back on their services?
What if the teacher has 30+ students, and something goes wrong with the technology?

That is a question I have been reflecting on quite a bit this week as I experienced a situation like this first hand. While teaching a lesson, something went wrong, completely out of the blue and unexplained. There was nothing I could have done to ensure that this would not have happened. It just happened.

I was not the only one who experienced this type of mishap. I watched many, if not most of my peers experience the same types of unexplained blunder. This has to be happening in the real world classroom, which must be unappealing for many teachers.

Now, this is not to say that technology is evil and we should throw it in a corner and forget about it forever. Technology has opened a magical door of learning to many students who, otherwise, would have slipped through the cracks. There is so much we can do with technology. The advancements are great for some. I consider myself slightly up to date on technological advancements, and am very pleased with where we have come as a society.

Back to "but".

As educators, I do not believe we should ever find ourselves fully reliant on technology in the classroom. Something will go wrong, I like to believe strongly in Murphy's Law, which states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. As educators, we should always have a healthy combination of teaching strategies, whether that be technology and pencil/paper or not. Technology might be the future, but that does not mean we have to forget about everything else.

North Carolina Teacher Candidate Standard #3d is a primary example of how I want to lead in my classroom. It states: "Teachers make instruction relevant to students". I want my classroom to be up to date, but not overboard when it comes to teaching. If I have a group of students who prefer pencil and paper, then we will do a little of that. But I will not neglect technology, appropriately.