Those teachers who immediately move to “how can I use this in schools?” often hit a brick wall because it’s not internalized. Certainly some superficial uses of technology can be done but deep, embedded use takes time and it’s a much easier sell when it’s a personal use.

My own experience with middle school science students is that the types of technology they are most familiar with (cell phones, IMing, video games, iPods) are not in sync with what they use in school (word processing, blogs, podcasts).

To some degree, I have tried to span this gap by training them in the “school tech,” as well as trying to make us of the technology with which they are familiar.

I find myself in different places on different days about in the conversation about preparing them for the 21st century workplace. I am not sure they we can predict well what technology needs are going to be in 10 years (which is good thing). I do think, however, that we can be more reasonably sure about what makes for engaging learning. Anyplace we can close this gap and make their everyday tech tools part of the normal learning environment, we have made learning relevant in a powerful way.

Example: I was told I couldn’t spend my university technology money on an iPod or a GPS unit because they were considered ‘personal’ rather than ‘professional’ technologies. Ugh.

Great examples. I purchased a GPS 4 years ago. Played with it for about 6 months. Since then I’ve introduced dozens of classes to it, we’ve purchased 3 sets of them for school use. Never would have happened had I not had a chance to play. Also introduced my Dad to it and he keeps me update on geocaching.

http://ideasandthoughts.org/2005/02/08/geocaching-and-my-73-year-old-father/