My experience
My experience with technology has been one that has grown and evolved over the years. When I was a young student, technology existed as a class of its own, separate from all other subjects. My main memories from that period involve KidPix, Snood, typing exercises, and the frustrating math game Number Cruncher that NEVER ACTUALLY TAUGHT ME ABOUT PRIME NUMBERS.
My memories of technology at the elementary level
As I moved to the secondary level, technology still existed as a separate course – with computers only being found in a computer lab – but it started to be incorporated into other subjects. Most of the time, this integration involved using word documents to print out final copies of papers, making slides for various presentations, and creating multimedia images using Photoshop or other programs for Art of Media-Tech class. Although this meant that technology wasn't just an end-goal in and of itself (I was using it in relation to other subjects), my interaction with it was still very superficial and even limited in terms of actual content learned through it. My biggest memory of technology from that time was not from school, but rather from the countless hours after school that I spent (wasted?) on MSN Messenger (LOL!).
As a student-teacher years later, I have seen a shift in how technology is used in the educational setting. In my first placement in three grade 10 English classes, every student had access to a Nexus 7 tablet. These classes were part of a pilot program in the public board in which every student is given a tablet at the beginning of high school and is allowed to keep them (i.e. take them home every night and use them over the summers) until he or she graduates. It was great knowing that I could plan a lesson around different groups of students watching different videos at the same time and know that they all had access to a device in order to watch. With that being said, I feel as though I did not explore this opportunity as much as I could have and did not experiment with different apps during my placement. I have since discovered a wide variety of different applications that would have been very beneficial (read about which ones I would have used on my Technology in English page. The other technological aspect of my placement was using Google Drive. Since every student had a device and a school-created email account through Google, both the students are I were able to share and edit documents with and for each other.
Moving forward, I hope that I can get over the overwhelming feeling that I have towards all of the different technologies out there and take more risks in using them as educational tools in the classroom. As we have discussed in class, teaching without technology is still a valid way to teach and not necessarily easy in its itself, but there are technologies that are out there for us to explore and to help in the learning process. I hope that I can help in this process!