HOWEVER, every up has a down and every positive has a negative. Despite my huge support of technology I thought I would take a minute to share the downsides it can have in a classroom, with a very true to life tale.
Once upon a time there was beautiful princess. She greatly upset the wicked queen and was banned to a life of low paying servitude in an education setting...
Fine, don't believe me...I was working in my classroom for children with Autism, but trust me, there was a wicked queen, errr director. Back to the tale!
I was assisting one of my high functioning kiddos who was quite smart. He worked on a reward system in which he could earn highly reinforcing items for appropriate behavior. For him this was the internet. As I sat with him on his 15 minute computer break I began multi-tasking, which is normally great but today proved horribly wrong. The additional work caused me to take my eyes off the screen for a bit. When I looked up, expecting to see some dumb anime website, I saw Google maps on street view. How peculiar, it looked just like my apartment complex neighborhood! Oh but it was! This little ankle biter had used the white pages to locate my address and searched for me! His plan was to "murder me while sleeping." Luckily he did not live in the same city as me and does not have access to reliable transportation. (Notice I left out my doubt in his ability to carry out murdering me.)
Whenever I get on my high horse about technology in the classroom, I just think back to this shining moment in my career and start to research the price of encyclopedias!
PS: I am forever and a day unlisted from here on out!
haha! Wouldn't that have made a great headline though?
ReplyDeleteMary Claire