As part of our last class of the semester, we were assigned to present to our fellow classmates on how to use one of three online organization/teaching tools. While I wish I could write a long excited post about how useful these websites will be, how I'm thoroughly inspired and can't wait to learn more about how to bring myself into the future via web-based magic, I just don't find myself feeling this way.
The idea of going paperless, the idea of having new websites inspire creative streaks in me that I never knew I had, the idea of creating for my classes presentations so visually pleasing they look as if they were professionally done by graphic artists...these ideas are all so appealing. And yet I feel as though I am just simply deaf to the beckoning of new technologies and the world wide web.
Maybe I'm just still not comfortable and skilled enough to enjoy using web-based applications to create lessons. Maybe with time I'll get the hang of it and enjoy it more. But I can't help but feeling as if all these technologies are simply details to a teacher's practice that will neither make a mediocre teacher great nor will the lack of their use make a great teacher mediocre.
I believe that with interesting material to present and an understanding of how to engage my students, my teaching can be effective and inspiring. I still feel that the best methods of learning are simply conversation and discussion (i.e. interpersonal sharing of ideas). In my experience, fancy presentations never engaged me in a boring lesson; only dynamic teaching did. And a dynamic teacher with minimal visuals certainly did not bore me.
So, I'm happy to learn about up and coming technologies and the pervading philosophies regarding the presence of these technologies in the classroom. I like to live in the present; I like to know about the new-fangled-gadgets that surround me. I'm just not personally interested for my own use.
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