I've always been one of the first to embrace some new tool or technology in either my professional or personal life, a trait innately imprinted from my dad and shared by at least one of my siblings (hi Hel!). I'm an eager up-taker of the latest and greatest phone, computer, tablet, stereo, camera etc and find that "new toy" to be almost irresistible at times. My drawers and cupboards provide a sad indictment of my cavalier approach to old models, with circuit boards of once glittering cellphone and iPad technology, leads and power cords, screens and chips, all littering these murky spaces like cars about to crushed in a junkyard compactor.
That said, the gratuitous use of electronic gadgets in education continues to perplex me a little. Even IT teachers like to repeat the mantra that these shiny new objects are just tools to get the job done towards a learning goal, not the goal itself. When administrators get their sparkling hi tech presents they are so enamored of them, so loathe to let them sit idle for any longer than the battery takes to charge, that they start to use them as the goal itself. I begin to wonder if that is why reading and writing scores across the world appear to be falling, sliding inexorably year by year. Are we using these jewels of technology just as dazzling baubles, not letting kids sit, think, infer and produce like we used to? I'm still a fan of my toys, but I think some teachers and administrators become so blinded by the light that they can't see the wood for the trees. Enough tired idioms for now?!
We had a super weekend as per usual! Eddie's Cantina was at the end of our Sunday stroll, so we indulged in an early dinner. The "pencil school" near our place is eponymously named (by us at least!), and Amelia Earhart done "old-school" style. I'm reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell and Cassy is reading Dear Life by Alice Munro
