First of all, apologies on the post. I had written it but forgot to post it (and then I lost what I had written).
Technology is part of our lives. People may resist it by not having a Facebook account, avoiding smartphones, or barely using e-mails. Yet, technology does regulate the most basic chores of our lives: traffic lights, shopping, buying a plane ticket to go the middle of nowhere… Students today accept technology as part of their lives but, in my experience, they do not know how to use it for boosting their learning.
In past projects with highschoolers, I have learned that students enjoy exploring their own technological skills and applying them for school. For example, when studying the difference between Romanesque and Gothic art in the Middle Ages, a group of boys used Minecraft to “build” two cathedrals. For showing it to the class, the character would walk around the buildings as a student recorded everything with his phone (they did not have the program for screen recording).
I think the use of technology should be across the the curriculum, in the same reading and writing is. In the past I have used Prezi for presentations, Mimio for working on grade 2 fine motor skills, Edmodo for managing classes (schools did not have platforms), and TodaysMeet, to name a few. Ironically (or not), the only professors that used technology the most when I was in college were soon-to-retire ones: one introduced us to the world of libraries, information, and databases; the second one was an art historian who used Powerpoint and the internet for everything; and the third one made us blog for every class.
The purpose for my registering for this program is precisely to give my amateurish, self-taught tech tools a more professional framework. More importantly, I want to know the resources available at Emory. It is very easy to come up with ideas, but it is harder to know who to ask for help. I am currently designing two syllabi: a survey and a thematic one. Therefore, I think the time for doing this course is excellent: right at the beginning of my college teaching career.