If I Had to Make a Syllabus in My Nightmares

Technology is the classroom is an incredibly hot topic. Should students have computers? How young is too young to allow students to have computers in the classroom? The first time I used a computer in the classroom I was in 5th grade. I don’t remember the assignment but I do remember the excitement of getting to use a laptop for the first time. The librarian rolled the big gray cart into the classroom and handed out big, clunky black laptops with little red dots at the center of the keyboard for a mouse. It was definitely one of the more exciting days of my elementary school career.

That was the starting point. From then on we used computers more and more frequently in the classroom until, finally, in college I was allowed to bring my computer with me to class every day for note taking and general use. The older I got the more my teachers and then professors incorporated technology into their lessons plans. One of the most noticeable examples of this was in high school when we started writing research papers or giving presentations that required PowerPoints. Similarly, in the nightmares where I find myself teaching I include such assignments that require the use of technology. Of course, in my nightmares I’m always teaching younger students just beginning to understand how technology can be applied to schoolwork when all they’ve ever known is the entertainment value of their parents’ iPad’s so my answer might not fulfill this week’s blog prompt—“What is one assignment you will include in your syllabus assignment that uses collaboration and/or technology and/or other things Yancey, Selfe, Breuch, Bruffee, or Shaughnessey have discussed”—but I’ll try.

Kids these days are growing up knowing technology, knowing how to use it and therefore don’t need to be taught the mechanics of it necessarily. What is necessary for students to understand early on is how the technology they love can apply to their academics. Book reports were once done with cardboard posters and cutouts. Now they can be done with PowerPoint presentations, videos or any number of such mediums. Such mediums can then be utilized as way to encourage students to be comfortable speaking in front of others, something I myself am very much not.

Allowing the students to choose their medium for such presentations is also a good way to teach them about what platforms work best for different presentations. PowerPoint is the obvious easy way out because it’s a tried and true favorite but I would try to impress on my students that a PowerPoint is much more than just putting up words and pictures on the screen which is something I think a lot of students don’t quite understand. A PowerPoint is not something you can just read off of because that makes for literally the most boing presentation in history. I should know, I spent all of sophomore year of high school being taught by a guy who that was all he did.

 As for using a video, if they were to do that I would ask them to act out what they think is the most important scene in their chosen book and then, after the class watched the video, have them stand up and explain their choice. This would allow them to work in groups because each student who helped another student with a video would get extra points on their own report thus encouraging teamwork as well as incorporating the use of technology into the classroom at an early age.