As we progress through time, more inventions are made that make our lives better and easier. The caveman made the wheel, allowing man to become more mobile; early man learned how create a surplus in food, allowing him to gain more food and grow the population; and the creation of the wonder drug penicillin, to just name a few. But these all had a common strand: technology. Without advances in technology we would still be at square one. But how did these advances come to be? How did man keep on creating and inventing? Why is that these skills are needed in technology?

I think Tony Wagner says it best in his book, Creating Innovators, The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, when he says students today need a few skills to be more successful in the world. Those are "play, passion, and purpose.(26-30). How do these deal with technology? Well, in my vision of what technology needs to be, students need to be able to use the technology in a way that allows them to play and experiment with them. Without play, students will feel as though the programs or Web 2.0 tools are just another assignment that will drain the  life out of them. The technology we give our students must tap into their passions. We need to look at our students as individuals and see what are their passions in life, and use that to create a useful curriculum for them. If we cannot tap into their passions, we will lose our students focus. Finally, the technology must have a purpose. Are we using it for PowerPoints that the students place pictures and information that they just read off of and never really learn anything from or do we have the students use technology with a purpose, for example, writing code to create an app to help someone or allowing them the choice in what they want to do. This is what my vision is for technology. We need to let our students become creators of content not consumers.

References:

Wagner, Tony (2012) Creating innovators, the making of young people who will change the world. New York: Scribner

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    My name is George Phillip. I teach 5th and 6th grade social studies at an Independent School in South Bend, IN. 

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