Technology - For What?

As a part of my first masters programs I thought and wrote a lot about the appropriate use of technology in education.  We were beginning year two as a Classrooms For the Future (CFF) school, and it seemed like many people were using technology for the sake of using technology, instead of thinking a lot about how technology allows our kids to have a completely different experience (where warranted) than student could only a few years prior.

Things have gotten better since then, which is likely a combination of an improvement in the tools (software and hardware) that are available to students to use, and a relaxation of our administrators attitudes toward technology use in the classroom.  Despite the improvement, I don't think that one has to look too hard to find examples where teachers think they're offering their students a transformative experience because they're using an online tool, but in reality the change is offering no real improvement in the learning or the experience of the students.

The following link will take you to a flowchart that I created when I was writing.  It shows the different ways that teachers use technology with students. It may seem a bit dated (again completed in 2009), I like to think that rather than engaging students using technology, we engaged them with content and meaningful tasks, and use technology when it fits organically with what our students are doing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-S3mRr_GPMublNXdEYwbEJqdkU/view?usp=sharing