It’s Time for Gratuitous EdTech!

I’m so done with article after article about how we should use Technology in the Classroom when it is “called for” or “appropriate.”  I think these were fine articles about five years ago, but they aren’t fine now.

---

Why has my attitude changed?  

Because my colleagues haven’t.

---

My colleagues who teach in colleges and university English departments across the country are still teaching students to write their essays on paper with pencils, skipping every-other line.  They are still spending weeks of instruction on using MLA style.  They are still lecturing on spelling and grammar.

Why am I upset?  Because they are wasting their time teaching things that can be better handled with technological tools, and ignoring the important aspects of writing that can’t be taught with anything but a competent professional with a heck of a lot of writing experience.  Why are we wasting our student’s time, and ours??

Just for Technology’s Sake: Move your paper-and-pencil work to Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Scrivner for goodness sakes!!  Teach students how to format their work with technology.  Push them to add pictures and captions and fonts.  Encourage them to think beyond paper to include videos, visualizations, infographics and timelines.

Just for Technology’s Sake:

Teach them to use Zotero, Mendeley or EasyBib or any of a thousand different bibliographic software programs .

Just for Technology’s Sake:

Try teaching students to use some artificial intelligence to help craft their essays, create their thesis statements, or check over their style and grammar.

As a bonus

Try creating a “Dork Short” session in your class where students present their favorite tech tool to their peers in a lightning fast (2 minutes or less) presentation, accompanied by two slides.  This might help refresh their tool box, and yours!

So lets stop with all those articles that seem to take a careful middle path and start to look at an alternative message.  Tell me, what is wrong with “Technology for Technology’s Sake” in the classroom?  What is wrong with me saying, “Hey, students!  I have decided to include technology in my classroom because it’s 2015.  You need technology to get a job, and I need technology to keep my job.”

It’s time to do that.  It’s time to be messy and uncomfortable and ungainly with technology every day because every day technology changes, and I will never really be great with it.  Technology will never be smooth or appropriate or called for, but technology is here to stay.  Yes, there is the outside chance that a electronic pulse bomb will eliminate all technology on earth–but if that happens, there is still ample opportunity to learn to write on paper.  In the meantime, let’s use some Google Docs to create our rough drafts, then let’s organize them in Scrivner or mix-it-up in Twine!  Let’s use some open-source textbooks, or Curriculate, and annotate them with LitGenius!

Let’s call for gratuitous technology in every classroom all the time.  This is the only way that we will prepare our students for life outside our classrooms, and it is the only way we can prepare ourselves for life tomorrow within our classrooms.

A Desperate Plea for Parity in The University System of Georgia

Update:  Today I received a registered letter informing me that my Tenure Track Contract would not be renewed for the 2014-15 Academic Year.  It was dated only two weeks from the date I posted this blog, and one week after I stood up at the Faculty Orientation and asked, “You want us to do research and write grants, but we have a 5/5 load.  Can you please tell us when we might expect a schedule in line with other four year colleges in the University of Georgia System?”    

I hold my head up, knowing that someone had to stand up for AMSC students, and proud that it was me.

I fully intend to be an active part of campus life and fulfill all of my duties until the end of my contract period.

This semester was my first semester at Atlanta Metropolitan State College.  It has been ups and downs.  Mostly ups.  I have a great dean, wonderful colleagues, an administration that seems genuinely interested in doing what they can to make the college as great as it can be, and some really amazing students.

However

There are some very serious problems too.  Most of the problems boil down to money, or lack thereof.  You see, AMSC has just become a four-year school, and they are facing significant growing pains.

I haven’t been there a long time, but I have seen some very serious issues that need addressing.  None of those issues, I am happy to say, have to do with people.  In fact, I don’t think I have, in 20 years of teaching, come across the level of professional dedication I see manifested at AMSC.  The faculty, staff, and administration are truly dedicated to the success of our students–but delivering that success to those students, in the financial environment we face, will, almost assuredly, fail.

I know that sounds harsh, but so are the conditions we face. AMSC is a Primarily Black Institution.  In other words, almost 98% of my students are black.  Most of them work, hard.  My 8 a.m. class was filled with students who had just left overnight shifts at local hospitals and restaurants and who took the bus to campus–sometimes arriving an hour before class.

Many of my students are parents.  Most of my students are first generation college students whose dreams of graduation and a better life push them to endure endless hours of study on top of their full time jobs and parenting responsibilities to attend classes at AMSC.

When you meet them, talk to them, hear their stories, you are pushed to dedicate yourself to helping them because they have done so much to help themselves.  I understand why I see my colleagues on campus through the breaks, late at night, and early in the morning.  I understand how much they push themselves to work with the students.

Unfortunately, no matter how much we dedicate ourselves we can’t possibly succeed under the impossible load of work we face and the lack of support we face.  Because AMSC was a 2-year school, we don’t enjoy the Alumni Support of 4-year schools yet.  In other words, we are not flush with money for technology or buildings or athletic