Keeping up with the times...

          When my students start showing me how to do new things on the computer then I know I have fallen behind the times.  Not that this would be a bad thing, but a teacher should be interested in learning to show their students useful tools.  When I was in elementary school, I had never used anything but a typewriter.  I had a typing class in High school, along with a computer class.  I didn’t own my own computer until I was in college. Now days, high schools are lending out laptops to their students and setting up parent accounts to help parents keep in contact/touch with their child’s grades and teachers. My how the times have changed!  My high school typing teacher would tell us that learning to type and load a typewriter ribbon would help us when we graduated.  If he only knew what we would have now!  Yes, typewriters were great…but the computer changed history! 
      
    When I first started college it was so great to have a computer lab that I could use.  When I finally bought my own computer I felt like I had a new lease on life.  I could use the Internet, type on instant message and write papers without leaving my home!  Now compare that to how it is now in schools.  Almost every classroom has their own computer and grades as young as kindergarten are going to their schools computer lab to work on class work. This is amazing and it just shows how teachers need to keep up with their own learning to be able to show their students what to do.
      
     Many teachers that I do know who are close to retirement age are not willing to learn how to incorporate technology into their lessons.  They are of the mindset of what has worked for me in the past will continue to do so.  Well, not so much.  I don’t believe that this is fair to their current student’s futures.    
  
         Getting back into the classroom is a future goal of mine, when my children are both in school.  I am looking forward to implementing all of this new computer technology that I have learned, but for now will have to settle for working with my five year old on the computer.

"Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others." - Confucius