The Beginning of the Journey

WOW! It has been an exciting day. I received news that my classroom has been chosen as the one who will receive one to one computing. I have been teaching for over 18 years; however, I still feel like a rookie. There have been so many changes in education over the past few years. Gone are the days when the "one size fits all" strategy works in the classroom. The students we are teaching are extremely techno literate which makes me a bit trepidacious to embark on the journey of incorporating technology on such a high level. I have been reading the book: Brain Based Teaching in the Digital Age by Marilee Sprenger and what struck me is how the brains of students today are wired differently for technology. Technology for them is what a pencil is for me. In order to be an effective teacher in the 21st century one must "know the language, the programs and your students better. Knowing their world means being familiar with cyberspace, text messaging." (Sprenger 2010) This means that I'm going to have to let go of many of my previous teaching methods and to rewire my own thinking in the way that technology, as a tool, can be used throughout the subject areas. When I was first approached to be part of the digital literacy project my first thought was "will I have a paperless classroom." Is it possible/realistic to go paperless? How beneficial/detrimental is a paperless classroom to students' learning? So many questions. At this point I need to relax and realize that heading to a paperless classroom happens in baby steps and not all at once. As Gail Gregory once said during one of her online presentations, "The way you eat an elephant is not all at once but by one bite at a time."