Meaningful learning and technology proficiency

After our class discussion on 9/29, I really started thinking about meaningful learning as a future parent. How can one create meaningful learning experiences for their child? A good place to start, I feel, is to think about the types of things that are meaningful to oneself- or what is important for me to teach my child? As a teacher, one sifts through the curriculum and makes decisions about the things they want to focus on in teaching – specific skills or concepts that they place a value judgment on. We have discussed in the past that when teaching, we teach a variety of unintentional curriculums, each unique and some even student defined. We then defined “meaningful learning” as finding new ways to interact with the environment that creates a change in the person. What then, is meaningful teaching? How does one teach meaningfully? How can we control any teaching situation when there are so many variables and make the experience a meaningful learning experience for our students? That is why I was somewhat disappointed in the Edutopia module we looked at. The experience was good because I got to see what Edutopia saw as technology integration. I didn’t think that any one project stood out more than the other, as some were very clear in terms of student expectations and some just looked really pretty. This brings me to my benchmark project. I will try to make sure that the unit isn’t about technology for technology’s sake. In a brief aside, I had a colleague tell me today that broken technology makes technology really hard to integrate. I understand his frustrations, as I seem to forget that just because I am technologically proficient; integrating a technology piece into a lesson is much easier for me than for others. So, does that mean that my technology lessons are more meaningful? Probably not, but they just go smoother for me than for somebody who is trying to do an interesting technology project who doesn’t have the same level of proficiency. I think this is why we are doing the PD piece in the benchmark, so we as technology leaders, can assist our colleagues in really integrating technology.