PLN #6

Tyler Aikens
Buchwald English 9

PLN 6

In the youtube clip, “What if?” originally by Karl Fisch, put us in the shoes of teacher from the past, and compares their issues to our modern day ones. The video kicks of with a quote from the Teacher Confrence from 1703 that states, “Students today can’t prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend on their slates which are more expensive. What will happen when the slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!” Then they talk about how students are relying too much on their papers and how they do not know how to properly clean their slates. About 200 years later at the National Association of Teachers, one teacher points out that if the students run out of ink from the store, they will not know how to make their own ink. These problems are certainly not ones that we as students do not have to worry about today. During the final slides of the video, the teachers ask questions that are in doubt of the future of technology and its impact on the school education system. One district employee in 1995 said, “Teacher will NEVER use email.” Signs in 2006 were posted around saying, “What if we’d listened?” Thats a great question because now every teacher uses email, every classroom has a computer, and technology takes part in our everyday lives.
In the video, “What if?” by Karl Fisch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJVMj1tQrcQ, our minds are boggled by the question of what if we would have listened to the teacher that did not believe in technology. If we had not believed in our technology on the rise, the way of teaching would be drastically changed in unimaginable ways. Everyday when I enter the classroom, I am surrounded by projectors, computers, televisions, and smartphones that are all being used for the purpose of education. By listening to these unbelievers, we would be in a school without the convenience of facts about a historical figure, know information given by an educational video, or be able to ask our mentors questions before school, or after school with email. It’s hard to believe that 200 years ago we were worried about us not being able to clean our slates properly, and now I do not even know what a slate is! Just 100 years ago we were also worried about running out of ink in our pens, and just 60 years ago, calculators were outlawed. Just recently teachers were uncomfortable with technology when without it, I would have been able to do this assignment!