Technology=Time

Our education classes expound the values and merits of technology. Smartboards, blogs, twitter, wiki pages, Google Readers, clickers, and scads of other technology can be beneficial for teachers and students in and outside of the classroom. Teachers need to access technology in order to relate to our texting, television-viewing, gaming students. However, teachers can also extract the benefits of technology by creating our own Professional Learning Network, or PLN, of educational and content-specific resources. After creating my own PLN, I have learned that technology takes time.

Reading the directions for Twitter, choosing my color scheme for a blog, and figuring out how to edit a wiki page all take time. As a student with a loaded class schedule, I wish I had more time to smooth the kinks out of my PLN. For example, I want to read more about Twitter and discover its "etiquette" as well as how to actually read tweets. In addition to the time it takes to set up the technology, I spend a bit too much time looking at my Google Reader and reading the latest posts from the people I'm following. The information I'm gleaning from reading other academic blogs is beneficial, but it's also distracting.

So, technology requires people to spend copious amounts of time discovering and using its many facets, but the time pays off in terms of information acquired and concepts learned.

If you have time, you can check out some of the other blogs I follow:

Vocabulogic

Dangerously Irrelevant

Dr. DRL's "View from Here"

English Teacher Geek

readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore

Theory Teacher's Blog

Or, some of the people I'm following on Twitter:

jem2323

mindi

spillarke

usedgov

englishcomp