Beyond Screen Time: The Low Tech Learning Matrix

I've already seen how certain marginalized teacher candidates are getting into the profession and making a difference because they could take courses on their own terms and in their own times.

And yes, I know synchronous and asynchronous are different, and I know synchronous is probably optimal, but gosh, I am so glad that these people are becoming teachers.

It makes my heart happy to see so many different people with busy lives, often teacher aides and instructional aides getting into the profession.

I've been able to connect with rural teacher candidates all around my state via Zoom, and the courses I teach are now allowing certain teachers to take courses where they're three hours away from the nearest physical university.

And again, we have connected to experts all around the world and built community despite our physical distance.

You know what? That's pretty awesome.

So if we wanna hate tech, let's step back for a moment and say, "We can do some pretty cool stuff." As a middle school teacher, I think about the Social Voice Media project, uh, or, or not even project, this ongoing thing, this, this program that we had that my students ran.

They had blogs and podcasts and videos that they published to both the local and larger community.

We crafted documentaries that we screened in front of larger audiences.

And yes, it was often the parents and family members, but it was also the whole community.

My students interviewed experts via Skype.

Remember that? And eventually Google Hangouts and then Zoom, and the technology changed, but that human connection never did.

We did a really cool long-distance apprenticeship project and some fascinating global collaboration projects.

Also, again, only things that we could do with tech.

So when I think about this idea of low-tech learning, I wanna be clear.

I love technology.

I see it as a powerful tool for creativity and connection and deeper learning.

But I also love technology enough to be critical of it and to recognize the dangers inherent in technology dependence.

For years, we fought for access.

Now we're fighting a different battle.

So I wanna talk about the access battle for just a moment.

So let's talk for a moment about the access issue.

In my second year of teaching, I convinced a few fellow teachers who weren't using their iMacs, picture the slick, round, candy-colored ones that we used to have, they were, they were really cool, uh, to let me have them in my classroom.

They weren't using it, and so I got to use them.

We used a program called Writely, the precursor to Google Docs, and I created a custom blog for my students.