Computers - Through the years

Yesterday I had a discussion with a friend about the TEAM Program. We talked about how technology has influenced our lives. I was one of the first people I knew to "own" a computer . . . I was a year old and it was my Dad's Commodore 64 . . . I still have it today.

Our generation grew up with this technology . . . in elementary school, weekly we went to "Computers" to play Oregon Trail for an hour and maybe learn some general computer terms. By the time we were in middle school, we had computers in the library and a lab that the teachers could bring us to (if they knew how to use them). Those computers had Internet access, but we generally couldn't access much because we had "BESS", a filter that filtered out just about everything. Fast-forward a few more years . . . we're now the teachers and all of a sudden I find that I'm somewhat out of the loop. I use email and I Instant Message, I own an iPod and have a myspace . . . but I feel that many of my students could have figured out how to make this blog in half the time it took me ! I feel that many people who are just a few years older than I am, don't know nearly as much as me, but at the same time people just a few years younger than me could run circles around me . . .

What am I looking to learn in this program? That's not an easy question to answer. I'm looking to figure out a way to grow with this technology. Over my lifetime we went from having these big huge computers, to being able to walk around with the Internet in our pockets . . . I want to be able to use it to better teach my students about life and the world around them, but at the same time I don't want them to lose sight of the rest of the world. I want to teach my students to be able to embrace this technology and not fear it. I want them to be able to feel like they have the world at their fingertips, because that's what I feel technology has truly given us.