Sunday, November 4, 2012
What did teachers do before the Internet?
My dyad teacher asked this question not too long ago. That same day, she helped a student understand who the Muppets were by bringing up a Youtube video of "mahna mahna", Googled some examples of character webs to use for her upcoming lesson, and showed us an example of word play by showing us a video of "Who's on First" on, you guessed it, Youtube. Similarly, on other days we have used the internet, and yes, Wikipedia, to find out more information or to help answer a question. My dyad partner and I even used the internet to plan a lesson on the presidential debates and persuasive techniques. Without the internet, we would have had to tape the debate, go back and find the clip that we wanted, and transcribe that clip ourselves so that the students can have written text to refer to in their discussion. The internet did all of that for us. With the amount of time teachers spend planning lessons for their students, even with all these resources at the touch of a button, it really makes me wonder, "what did teachers do before the Internet?"
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This is an interesting question. I have sometimes wondered that same question, but just about functioning in everyday life. What did I do before I had navigation on my phone? Oh wait, I asked for directions! I think that the internet creates opportunities to collaborate in really amazing ways. Do you think that on some level it is taking away the face to face collaboration we could be having with other educators that are right next door?
ReplyDeleteNot at all. Its been really cool to see all of my mentor teachers collaborating with their peers at school, even though they are all digitally connected. This just allows them to reach even more people and to share/borrow more ideas.
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