Hall_Morgen_SU2014

=Morgen Hall=




 * Technically, a reflection: **

The smartphone.

It’s not a telephone. I know telephones. I was placing phone calls to my grandfather in Pennsylvania on a rotary phone at the age of two. I was the one who recorded our witty answering machine messages, was first to the phone from any place in the apartment, could gab for hours and even took pleasure in torturing telemarketers. On a telephone you dial a number and are able to talk with people far away. I remember thinking a lot about how things would be if we didn’t have a host of our modern technologies... without phones we would write letters. There’s something more intentional about letter writing - less instant gratification, more forethought. I loved to write, but the need for the epistolary format proper never quite arose; connections with pen pals were brief, letters to and from relatives clouded by the bizarre formalities and commercialism of greeting card culture.

It’s not a cell phone. Don’t get me wrong, a lot changed with the cell phone. You can imagine my surprise when it turned out that the new black bag next to my dad’s stick shift had a phone in it, a phone that worked without being plugged into anything. By the time I got my first cell phone in 7th grade (my dad having had some stroke of prescience, certain as he was that these were the Next Big Thing) the novelty had ratcheted up to include pocket sized-ness and the capacity to send messages. I had no idea how central this object would become to my budding teen identity. It was MINE; I had a conduit of communication with which I could subvert the codes of bed time, decency, and timeliness, to name a few. It was so much easier to tell someone how I really felt in a quick little text message J

Then came the smartphone. Wait, when came the smartphone? Does it matter, though? Didn’t we know it was coming all along? When I got my first Nokia it was already out of date. By the time I got to Fliphone there were already bbms doing circles around me in the airwaves. I was never not tech savvy, but knew enough about material struggle to appreciate what I had. (That uncanny role reversal when dad is the one who cries because his kids can’t have it all...) I’ve never rejected flat out technological progress, but I’ve had enough critical capacity to observe and push back on the way that unquestioning acceptance and participation in consumerist / leisure culture as status quo in fact forms a large part of the world view and politics of Americans. I still don’t have a smartphone, but honestly don’t know that that will be the case for too much longer. The debate is getting tiring to carry on in my mind, both sides having been making their arguments now for around 5 years. I think I’m just about ready to give in, but I’m really still not sure if it’s for my own good.

Course Learning Goals:

1.Explore potential digital platforms for my classroom which will facilitate student participation in reflective work both individually and collaboratively.

2. Go back through one unit from the past year that I will be using again next year and write a reflection on my use of technology in the unit as well as how technology can be better utilized within the unit.

3. Create a wiki page of resources.

4. Plan instruction of digital responsibility with an intro to copyright lesson.

5. Participate and collaborate in our classroom learning community and online communities to explore the relationship between our students’ learning and digital technologies.

Check out my Final Portfolio!