The Polliwog Journal » Technology and Education http://dhogue.edublogs.org A weblog about teaching English & integrating technology Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:21:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 A question, phoned in from the bus http://dhogue.edublogs.org/2009/03/02/a-question-phoned-in-from-the-bus/ http://dhogue.edublogs.org/2009/03/02/a-question-phoned-in-from-the-bus/#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:41:03 +0000 Dawn http://dhogue.edublogs.org/?p=110 One of my AP students is also my yearbook editor and there are times we need to communicate, so we have each other’s cell phone numbers. Today, he and three of his classmates missed our class for a genetics conference, so I had set them up with the assignment: read Donne’s A Valediction Forbidding Mourning and complete the questions. Of course his group missed my classic demonstration of Donne’s famous metaphysical conceit with my big, wooden compass, the retro kind used on chalkboards (remember those)?

But he called. He and his group were on the bus coming back to school from the conference and they had some questions. What does “sublunary” mean? How about laity? I had forgotten to suggest they take along a dictionary. You can’t send everything along on a field trip. So I defined the words for him, and as his partners wrote things down, he relayed other questions, and I realized, wow, we’re using technology to extend our teaching realm.

This is why I love technology. If teaching is helping students learn, then why are there any rules at all about how to do that? Why can’t students phone in their questions?

I’ll admit that a text message at 9:30 p.m. asking “can I have an extension on my essay” isn’t exactly what I have in mind when I suggest we should consider extending our teaching realm, it’s not that far off, not really.

When we need our teachers we need them, whether it be during our class time or not. I know that it is unlikely that all 125 of my students will need me at once (can you imagine???), so I just like to be there, by phone, by text, by whatever means technology allows us to break down our communication barriers.

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