As I was babysitting last week, and interviewing the 7th grade girl about reading and her English class for a project of mind I found out something that simply amazed me. I asked her if her teachers used PowerPoints often. She looked at me like I had three heads. She asked me what a PopwerPoint was and I responded with "You know, like slides, they put them up with notes on them for you to copy". She honestly had no idea what I was talking about and had never created a PowerPoint presentation for a class. This had me baffled so I had to find out more about the technology use in her classroom.
I continued to talk to her about her classroom and how the teacher implemented technology. She responded with, she really doesn't. Not to age discriminate, but I asked how old this teacher was and she told me that she was older, definitely one of the older teachers in the school. This made me think that there was a little bit of a technology disconnect between her and the students. Further more this made me wonder if the girl was at a disadvantage being in this school district. PowerPoints, to me at least, are a huge part of technology and presentation in college, next to papers of course. Not only do students have to create them but teachers use them to present information.
I then thought back to my classes when I was in middle school. I am absolutely positive that we worked with PowerPoints both in the aspects that teachers used them and we had to create them in order to present information. My cooperating teacher just had her students present a type of book report via a PowerPoint, so I know that it is being used in other 7th grade classrooms. To say the least, are some teachers holding students back from things that they will need to know technology wise? (not all of course) Also, is PowerPoint a lost art due to the new uses of the SmartBoard?
There is a big technology gap between schools because some schools have the smartboards, but others only rely on PowerPoints; it all has to do with resources. It could have very easily be the other way around that your student had no idea what a smartboard was. It is interesting to think how the disparity in technology may affect students. Businesses even use Powerpoints presentations and if this student has never been exposed to it she may be at a disadvantage for jobs. Then again, knowing about smartboards can be an advantage too if your student were to become a teacher. The problem is how do we as teachers know which technology to use in our classroom? If we have smartboards, do we not utilize Powerpoints anymore? It is a tricky topic when you see how different even schools of the same district are in their technology use.
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