"Tablets for Learning" or "Time to Rethink"

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I really enjoyed this week's activity wherein we had to find a primary source on the topic of the "iPad & Learning" and summarize it. Well actually, I did not really enjoy the summarizing part but, I did find the researching and reading part very fascinating. I also learned four interesting things. 

First, I learned that when your professor gives the whole class the same assignment to "find and summarize" a primary source on the week's topic and admonishes that each student must summarize a different reference source, the professor changes the nature of the student - student relationship. No longer are we members of a learning community working together to master the material. Rather, we are rivals seeking the best informative gems. The situation suddenly becomes a zero sum game. 

With this change, strategy suddenly becomes important. It suddenly behooves us to do two things. First, start our research early. Second, go to the class page as soon as we find a good reference source and "stake our claim." We should do this even before we start to summarize it. We have to prevent our classmates from coming in while we are summarizing and "snaking" our reference source. Yes, by limiting our resources, the professor suddenly made strategy come into play. 

I am not saying that that is a bad thing. I am just saying that I found the paradigm switch from learning community to zero sum gamesmanship very interesting.

Source: http://www.economnomnomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/swipe.jpeg

Second, and maybe this is just me but, I learned that the online availability of a reference source is inversely related to its potential value to my research. I cannot recall how many references to seeming right on point articles I found that, when I went to find them, I discovered that they were not available online. In direct contrast, the less desirable an article seemed to my research, the more readily available online it seemed to be. Humm...

Source: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvd8ejQR3O1qb4j6qo1_500.png

Third, and this was the most shocking, I learned that when it comes to iPads in the classroom, I am an "old school" thinker. I learned that I need to retool my thinking to allow me to maximize the pedagogical value to my students of their using tablets in my classroom. The article The Game Changer: Using iPads in College Teacher Education Classes. (http://eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pbh&AN=77305728&site=ehost-live), really drove home the point that to be in effective educator in today's and tomorrow's classroom, we educators must first educate ourselves on how our students learn. We must then take that knowledge and use it to transform our own thinking  about how best to teach and how best to prepare and present the material we create for our students.

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Lastly I learned, or rather relearned, that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know and how much more I have yet to learn!