Too Much Technology, Not Enough Time

I spent the weekend with Erica working on our final project.

We looked at different web 2.0 tools which would make our site intersting and engaging. We had an idea of what we wanted to do but we didn't know how to implement it. So we spent the time before the weekend searching for things that we thought would work best. After going in circles, we found that there are a lot of good things to use but need a lot of invested dollars to make it work. For us starving students, it wasn't going to work. Scraping together what we had to use for free, we talked through different scenarios of how things would work. After a lot of sitting, drinking tea and coffee, and listening to infomercials on the TV, we finally had it.

I will leave the details to our presentation but the purpose of this weeks blog entry is that I realized something. Technology can be a great thing and can be a bad thing depending on how it's used. There is so much stuff out there but not enough time to try everything. When using technology, I think it is best to sample and play with a handful of items. There will always be something better out there but maybe for what you want to accomplish, what you have can serve fine. You also do not want to use too many tools in a single lesson plan. This might confuse the students. Using new technology is useful but just make sure it's not taking away from the main goal of the lesson you are teaching.