In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!
Day 28
Respond: Should technology drive curriculum, or vice versa?
I don't think it's like that. The student should drive both. What is the reality of technology use in the world that our students are growing up in? I pay attention to what technology they're using outside the classroom. My middle schoolers are using their parents' smartphones, their own ipods, xbox, google docs, online gaming, instagram, snapchat, skype...
Next step, teach with those technologies in the classroom. And teach how to use them responsibly, with health and safety in mind. The class content vehicle is student-driven. Relevance is key. For Media Arts, I'm not going to ask my school to invest in a bunch of cameras when there are cameras on the devices in their lockers not being used. #BYOD (bring your own device)
Curriculum also looks at the student's world. Media Arts in general ought to teach kids about voice, mass communication, storytelling, media literacy, collaboration / teamwork, project management, and how to take a good photo. Now - when I apply this to instagram, for example, I need to consider what the student's needs, desires and definitions of success are for that medium. The curriculum is shaped to the student's real world experiences.
Technology has been a hot topic in education for a long time, and for obvious reasons. Computers have ruled the realm of knowledge acquisition and application since their invention, gaining ground in this arena year after year at a dramatic rate. Ever since the day in 1983 when all those classrooms got Apple IIe computers, technology has been an integral part of education. Curriculum of course has been around a whole lot longer, but from our students' perspective, there's no priority between the two.
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