Pretty Neat

Well, maybe I was jumping a bit overboard complaining about the available technologies....fact of the matter is, ever since I made that comment, I have been proven wrong over and over again.

I really enjoyed reading others' blogs regarding the power point presentation - that seems to be what most blogged on. I know that was not my best work, but I did enjoy the movie project quite a bit, although I did have a very hard time with text font and timing...everything else was quite fun and I look forward to making a nicer one to use in the classroom eventually and this is something I would definitely have my students do!

I was talking to my daughter about a project she is doing in school - she is in the sixth grade. She said she needed to make up a power point presentation, and I was like "can you do it at home, or does it have to be done at school?" She said that it all had to be done in school. I mentioned that I learned some pretty neat effects that I would show her if she wanted to incorporate into her project and she said "I already know how to do all of that mom. We play around with it all the time. It's fun."

This said two things to me 1) Technology is play for kids....for many adults (including myself) it is just another thing to master that I stress finding the time to squeeze in, and 2) I am further behind in the technological revolution than I had EVER imagined. Apparently knowing more than my mother and grandmother does not count as being tech savvy. I need to know more than my children - or at least as much as they know in order to even be on the same page as them.

While I am still the most important "tool" in that classroom for helping students learn, these technologies are what they want to use to explore and play with the topics/knowledge they have to see how it fits into their world and their understanding. To be able to do that, I have to learn these things, or I will be a boring, old teacher.....sigh....that's not so neat....