Technology+Leadership+Book+Summary

I will be the first to admit that I was not looking forward to reading another book about education and technology but this book changed my mind after about five minutes in. The book I was lucky to pick was titled //Empowering Students with Technology// by Alan November. November believes that at first technology use can be broken down into two categories, automating and informating. Automating in general is just adding technology added on top of what is already in place in the classroom. By automating technology in the classroom small gains can be made if any at all. Informating is still using technology but having empowerment on the application of technology. I find this interesting as it seems to have a Bloom’s Taxonomy approach as well. Just the same as the classroom, the higher the level of thinking applied, the greater the gains made in the classroom. The great thing about this book was to get students thinking about where the information you see on the internet comes from and how to use it. Another suggestion made was to have students relate their work to an authentic audience. “One of the most powerful lessons I have learned about student motivation is that if students are given an authentic audience they work harder as a group than they work for the teacher alone. Creating authentic audiences for students is one of the emerging skills for teachers. Many teachers also agree that students work harder for an authentic audience than a grade.” (November, 2001) This is a very powerful quote and I find that this is a very true statement. Think about the times that a student wants to know when they are using this in real life. Well, you now have your answer. In the real world we are using technology to have meetings, create everything that we take for granted today, and so much more. If we can give students an authentic audience to apply, not use, technology then we are truly preparing our students for the 21st Century. November does an excellent job of breaking down the book into five chapters: Teaching and Learning the Structure of Information, Empowering Learning by Expanding Relationships, Emerging Roles Within the Knowledge Community, Accessing Primary Sources to Enhance Critical Thinking, and building Knowledge Without Boundaries-Online Learning. In the first chapter you get an idea of how students are just blindly searching for information without determining the credibility of the source of the information. If students pay attention to the hyperlink, they can determine if the information is a personal statement or if it could be coming from a credible source. The second chapter works on improving student interactions on the internet and what is appropriate when speaking with others from around the world. Chapter three explains how roles of the student and teacher can be switched so that students can teach the teacher or other community leaders on using technology. Chapter four encourages students to create their own knowledge from limitless information on the internet instead of a textbook. Chapter five brings up online classrooms and how it can be another tool to reach more students and be successful. This is a very good read and it has some activities to use in the classroom to get kids thinking about how to use technology correctly and for teachers to use informating in the classroom integration of technology, not automating to add more to the curriculum. References: November, A. (2001). //Empowering Students with Technology.// Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.