Technology Inspiring and Motivating in the Midst of Constant Change

Everyday new posts are posted on blogs, twitter, LinkedIn and other digital media indicating a myriad of new notions and emerging possibilities for digital teaching, thinking, learning, creating and communicating in 21st century. Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts our technological capabilities will frame the coming 25 years as one of the most exciting times in human history. This excitement, however, often loses its lustre as teachers seek to integrate technology into their instructional practices with insufficient resources and aligned professional development.

What might be the factors or influences that encourage teachers to take risks involved not only to navigate the murky waters of technology integration, but also to put tech tools into the hands of their students? Across time and cultures, personal stories have transformed the minds, motivations, and actions of others.

21st-century literacies realistically in their classrooms, offered by eighth-grade teacher and framework guideline contributor, Sandy Hayes. They include the following:

• Do the usual work in a different way: Take a project or assignment you already do and use one tool to give the project a digital twist.
• Use the tools to learn: Don’t learn just to use the tools.
• Engage in meaningful assessment: Assess the work against skills and content learning, not by the finished product.
• Expect chaos: You are the nexus of chaos, so develop procedures to minimize the number of students clamouring for your help.
• Expect Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong probably will.
• Acknowledge your students as resources: You’ve heard the saying, “And the children shall lead you.” It’s truer than ever.

Meanwhile, as the spectrum of what was, what is, and what can be continues to broaden possibilities for literacy learners.
Using the Media Education Lab tool What’s Your Motivation?, made available via Powerful Voices for Kids, teachers gain better understandings of how their attitudes about and motivations for digital learning have an impact on instructional practices. Cutting-edge professional development tools like these have the potential to harness technology capabilities of the coming quarter century, leading to literacy teaching and learning that may dazzle the likes of Ray Kurzweil in years to come.

This article is referenced with the part of a series from the International Reading Association’s Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).
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