Having recently returned from the ACEC'08 conference in Canberra, I have been particularly inspired to be creative and step out of my comfort zone to include more IT in my teaching. One particular point that arose at the conference was that the students that we teach today have a range of technologies at their disposal and so are able to present work in a variety of ways. We should allow them to do this, even if we (the teachers) are not 100% knowledgeable about the programmes they may use. We cannot possibly be expected to be the experts on everything that is out there.
With this in mind, I did a survey of my year nine religion class to find out about all their technological know-how. Their understanding of blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools, of which I had only been vaguely aware pre-conference. To my amazement, all but 1 had no idea what a blog is. Nobody had heard of a wiki. Two had ever made a podcast (one of those learnt to do that in my music class) and none of the others had any idea what a podcast is. Google docs? Don't you use that to find stuff on the Internet? Nope, nobody knew what they were either.
I can only conclude that, if I am going to include technology as a way of teaching, then I am going to first have to teach my students about all the wonderful things that are out there.
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