3 Life Lessons about Educational Technology

I’ve had my fair share of life lessons with educational technology. Educational technology is continuously changing with no end in sight of new and innovate technologies for the classroom. As an educator, I get tired of the “new and innovative” technologies and methods for the classroom. I am open to new ideas but I’ve had my fair share of life lessons that have opened up my teaching for the best. In this blog post, I will discuss the three real-life lessons about educational technology.
 
Educational Tech is not your friend
As an educator, I’ve had experiences and seen it myself where technology is not your friend and probably will never be and here is why. Technology is not meant to overtake your teaching or intended to be better than your teaching. As the educator technology is supplemental to the, not the actual teaching.

I recall students telling me how they don’t like it when educators show them hour-long videos in the classroom when they want to learn, and they find it a waste of time.

Why show up to class if the educator will show one-hour long movies in the class instead of teaching, which leads me to my next point, videos in the classroom.  
 
Videos are not your answers
A video is not always the answer to your teaching. As I mentioned in the previous section, technology is not your teaching; it is the supplement to your instruction. When showing a video in the classroom, there are questions that you have to ask yourself first, which you can read about in a previous post I wrote.
 
After answering the questions and assessing the video than show the video in class. If you are showing the video at a conference test it before the presentation. I can’t tell you the number of times I sat during presentations to watch the video not work correctly.

The presenter wastes 5 minutes trying to figure it out and by the time the tech comes and figures it out it’s been 10 minutes to watch a 2 minutes clip that had no sense in showing in the first place. Remember, technology is not your friend.   
 
Don’t follow the crowd
Presenting at numerous conferences over the years throughout the country I am open to listening to other presenters discuss the latest technology and how they use it in the classroom. But I am not quick to jump and follow the crowd.

I remember Twitter being the big thing in teaching and how everyone needed to use Twitter in the classroom. I won’t lie I also fell into the Twitter in the classroom crowd, heck I even presented on Twitter in the class.

After realizing that Twitter only worked for one group of students and not others I stopped. Don’t follow the crowd, assess your needs first and see if it fits your teaching style and pedagogy.
 
Don’t get suckered into the educational technology hype and don’t rush to the technology. What works for one classroom may not work for your class. Let my three life lessons in educational technology guide you in the classroom.  

Dr. J Real Talk

Discussing business, ed tech, and life. Follow me on social media @DrJRealTalk ​