The 7th Graders with iPads

I went to a progressive high school, but that does not directly mean that we were supposed to use technology to learn. In many schools students are not allowed to use laptops or other electronic devices because teachers don’t want students to be distracted, but this was not the case at my high school. I wouldn’t say that we were the most high tech school in the country; it was just that the use of technology/ the use of new technology was something that I experienced on a regular basis. I typically took notes on my computer for at lest ¾ of my classes. This helped my stay organized and allowed me to go back and edit my writing or make study guides from my notes. This was my normal interaction with technology while in a learning environment. But, my school tried to really integrate new ways of learning with technology as well. I remember that for a French project we corresponded with a Moroccan class where we wrote plays for each other and acted them out via a large video chat. I would say this is just some light integration of technology, and this is what I experienced, but my school went even deeper with their use of tech. Last year they started out the whole 7^th grade with ipads and fully integrated them into all of their classes. Literally every class of everyday was ipad based for these 7^th graders. But, the program was met with great confusion by many older students at my school. I was actually surprised that many of my peers were saying how this would ruin these kids’ education and that these ipads were not that good for classroom purposes. I tried to keep an open mind because I liked new styles of teaching like this. So, when the 7^th graders made a presentation, I got to experience first hand what it was like for them to go through all of their classes using the ipad. It really seemed that with the help of some great apps for the ipad, classes were going well and students were responding well to the use of new tech. What was cool was that the whole presentation was done on ipads. After seeing this presentation, I was quite impressed and could really see this being the future of many other classes. What was so interesting to me was how many of my peers still saw these ipads as mere gaming devices and not so much as a tool that could be utilized as a learning device in the classroom where as many of the adults in the community responded positively to the use of ipads. I would expect the opposite where students would be praising the use of new tech while the older people would be denouncing this radical way of teaching. I think that the reason many of my peers saw the ipads as distraction was because they thought that the way they grew up learning was good enough without ipads and that bringing in this tech was unnecessary. From this experience plus some others, it seems like tech is being rejected in the classroom by most people, but progress never stops. And because progress never stops, there is always going to be new ways to teach using tech that schools, teachers etc. are going to have to/want to use because that is the way of the future. Why not utilize the best tools available for learning? Often it makes the class more interesting for the student and gets them more engaged in their own learning experience. This is what I saw firsthand coming from these 7^th graders, a group of kids that were really excited about what they had been learning about and were able to make a whole digital presentation about what they were learning and how they were leaning it. This is just a small slice of what living in a digital culture means.  The use of ipads is just one example of how teachers are actively using the digital culture we live in to educate their students. There are thousands of other ways that are available to utilize as educational tools and they are becoming more and more advanced everyday/ new devices and programs are coming out faster and faster these days, so it seems like there are a lot of possibilities for educational devices for the future. To me, pushing forward with the use of new tech seems like the way to go.