Reading the article “Using TPack Framework: You Can Have Your Hot Tools and Teach with Them, Too” brought me back to the beginning of my teaching career some ten years ago. At the time technology was scarce although it was starting to become more and more prevalent in the classroom. At the school I was working at two soon to be retiring woodshop teachers taught the technology classes and managed the computer labs. By mid year the new at the time computers began to get very slow, and younger teachers such as myself started to notice that a few of the icons were games, and not necessarily educational games (i.e. Grand Theft Auto) Needless to say it was not out of the ordinary for someone to say “the kids know more about computers then the teachers.”
In present day I find that sort of issue is beginning to disappear as many of the children of that generation are now teachers, and can do a better job of monitoring web misuse then the older teachers at the time could do. With that said the idea of creatively repurposing technology to assist in driving instruction should not just be an idea but a goal.
As teachers we would not be doing our job of preparing our students for the work force of the future if we were not putting them in front of a computer for at least some of their tasks. I recall teachers thinking that it was very new and creative to use various programs on Microsoft office besides Word such as Power Point, and Excell. Now those programs are used as commonly to assist in driving instruction. I feel using social networking sites, and various other forms of technology will eventually become just as prominent.
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