Although I worked for nearly three years in an IT department for a NJ state agency, please do not let that “professional background” fool you! When I was finishing up middle school, I built my first website using Geocities (remember that? or Angelfire?). Then later, into high school, I was able to use these skills I learned, and became familiar with HTML to develop sites to promote musical acts I was a part of, and would continue this until my early years of college. After being turned away by the powers that be from taking graphic design and technology-oriented courses at Rutgers (the infamous “RU screw” of their bureaucracy), I polished my erudition in the humanities and social sciences, and allowed my tech pursuits to fall by the wayside. To this day, I have never learned Flash or Javascript, never fully became acclimated with Adobe software (Acrobat, etc.), and still have never used Powerpoint - all this despite my work in IT!
Yet at the same time, despite my limitations, I recognized that there is a lot to be said for technological know-how, and that technology provides a countless number of advantages and opportunities for those who can harness it. As Karen Eini demonstrates with her online community “Friends and Flags,” it is possible to bring together over 30,000 young people in a cultural exchange program that would not have existed without her (or her students’) internet capabilities. The cultural exchange mediated through her website has fostered a community of enlightenment for participants and allowed students to learn about “commitment, global collaboration, and the joy of giving,” in addition to a better grasp of their curriculum. Rona Frederick also shows us ways how technology can be an empowering experience for inner city students who gain much from understanding their identity and ability to access knowledge that they would not otherwise be privy to.
In this way, I believe that exploring uses of technology can exponentially enhance our means of education. Teaching students the “what” of content is important, but teaching students “how” to access content, and to critically and creatively engage it in ways provided by technology is a fantastic way to invest in both their (and our own) shared future. At the same time, technology provides opportunities for distraction. With the proliferation of information in an unmediated manner on the internet, this simultaneously empowers adolescents, but also creates venues for irresponsible content exchange. I think it is in the best interest of educators to show students how to productively and responsibly make use of the great technology that is available to them.
