Teachers: Ditch the Excuses, Kids Come First!

I thought Bianca raised a key issue in her blog posting “Give Students a New Audience Everyday” from Judi Harris’ “Wherefore art thou telecollaboration?” about encouraging students to celebrate their work by using technology to communicate and share their ideas with the rest of the world. Bianca mentions statistics from Judi Harris’ article stating “that 75% of teachers believe that technology is valuable in education however only 35% of teachers use it in their classroom”. These fairly recent statistics took me by surprise and lead me to ponder over why exactly this was the case.

I didn’t have to ponder much longer as Bianca later mentions in her posting that the teachers who aren’t incorporating technology into their classrooms are using worn-out personal excuses such as “computer illiteracy, time, unreliable computers” and “lack of computers”. I would have to agree with Bianca that this is not time to be making excuses, and that she is completely right in saying that “there are so many fascinating and exciting activities” online that can help to “celebrate students’ work”. I, like Bianca, hope that teachers start realising sooner than later that we are living in a world basically run by technology, so in order ensure to engage in technological activities and ideally feel ready to face the real world.