Yesterday I received an email stating that a new tech tool had finally come in and I was very excited.  The person who was next to me was a little confused that a tool could make me so excited.  Now I know many people think of me as a techie who loves all technology but that is because of how I view what we can do with those technological tools.  Many people see tech in a very limited window as having a small set of uses and then focus too much on the limitations of that tool or the time it takes to use that tool effectively.  I view a piece of technology as a wide breadth of posibilities of which we can make use of to do things we haven’t tried before or just even to do things better when compared to how we have done them in the past.  I am always looking forward and trying to find how we can be better and do things in a better way.

The series, Shots of Awe, does a much better job than I can of explaining these possibilities and helping others see how technology is much more than distraction but a connection to a new world of possibility.  The following videos I think do a great job of explaining this and there are definitely many more I would watch.

We can do things today that were not possible even 20 years ago but yet so many are quick to block and ban instead of embracing the possibility.  Why should a classroom in a small, rural school only be able to connect with those around them.  Why not connect with others and be able to work collaboratively in real time, something we could not do well even 10 years ago.

The tech tool we got was a Swivl, which is pretty much a robot that will track you so you can record yourself using a tablet or phone.  The  microphone allows for greater pickup of the sounds and you can easily upload the video and share with others.

While some are unsure about recording themselves in the classroom or using cameras in class, there is a ton of uses we can have for this.  When a teacher records themselves teaching, they can see their class from the perspective of a student and we sometimes are too disconnected to be able to understand that viewpoint until we see it.  There is a large amount of uses we have for recording video and this becomes a great reflection tool that is not the limit of the possibilities.  A teacher could use this to record an experiment or demo for others to see later.  They could use it to record students presenting or having a discussion in order to share with other students or for further use later.  They could even use it to help create resources for students to use as they need as they continue along their learning path.  They could ……

We place the limits on the technology and that limits what the technology can do.  We have to remember that there are so many possibilities out there that may not be clear to us but we should not ignore them.  We also need to remember that as we keep moving forward, the ways of the past can be improved and made more useful and that we need to be thinking of the possibilities or else we will limit what we can do.