I have been thinking a lot lately about the use of technology in classrooms… It seems to make sense with the student population hyped up on Facebook and Twitter, and the numerous advances being made in high-tech products such as the Kindle and the iPad, to incorporate some of these new tools into the learning environment. But this technology must also be integrated into coursework in a creative and productive manner, rather than relied on as a crutch to teaching.

For instance, I think it’s great that a lot of English professors at QC are encouraging the use of blogs because these virtual spaces allow students to express themselves more freely than they would in a written assignment. Also, instead of writing responses or journals solely for their professors to read, students now have the opportunity to write to each other. Blogging can therefore lead to the creation of a unique online community where students can debate and exchange ideas with their classmates, which can in turn spark classroom discussions. At the same time, this also means that professors must make a greater effort to bridge the conversations and topics raised on these blogs with those they cover in class. I have found that the most interesting courses are the ones in which professors facilitate these connections by challenging and complicating the issues students discuss on blogs in the classroom, where professors are flexible enough to alter their syllabi to reflect the interests and concerns students express online. As a result, rather than leaving blogs as merely virtual spaces, professors should perceive them as tools that contribute to the dynamic nature of teaching itself.

The “smart” board used in a number of Macaulay Honors courses and English senior seminars is also an amazing technological tool. It offers incredible opportunities in the classroom to access the internet and play various kinds of multi-media that can stimulate student discussions, but aside from the numerous technological glitches that occur while using it, the temptations the “smart” board provide can also play a distracting role. Just being in the vicinity of this high-tech gadget often sparks urges to look-up, for instance, a youtube video of a hit song that a particular poem reminds you of, which leads to digressions and draws the focus away from critical aspects of the text you are examining. Therefore, with the increased use of technology in classrooms, professors must work harder to maintain a balance between employing multi-media and the internet in a productive fashion and letting these tools distract students from learning.

Okay, so I’ll just end this post by saying that technology does offer limitless possibilities, but in order to take advantage of them, we must prevent these technologies from controlling how we teach and learn. They are tools that are meant to assist these processes, yet they should not become crutches we rely on to move discussions forward. At the same time, this does not mean that we shouldn’t continue to explore ways in which technology can be useful in classrooms. For instance, after my biology lecture class today, I had to stand on a line for nearly thirty minutes before I could check my grade, because even though they were listed by the last four digits of your social security number, these numbers were completely out of order in one large packet for a class of over a hundred students. I am sure that if the biology department posted this information on a password protected blog or website, it could have saved a lot of time and would definitely have been much more efficient than having students clog the hallways in Colwin… I guess this is just another thing for QC administrators and professors to think about.