On technology

[barnabas_truman]

"People always think of technology as something having silicon in it. But a pencil is technology. Any language is technology. Technology is a tool we use to accomplish a particular task and when one talks about appropriate technology in developing countries, appropriate may mean anything from fire to solar electricity."

--Mae Jemison, first black woman in space

Comments

[serpent-star.livejournal.com]

Aw, that was beautiful! :D

[barnabas-truman.livejournal.com]

When I was student-teaching, one of the big assignments I had to do for the credential program was "design and implement a lesson that uses technology." It was pretty clear from context that "technology" meant "you have to use a computer," but the assignment didn't specifically say this. So my "technology" was an oldschool overhead projector and a whiteboard.

...but a really clever use of them. I was introducing the sine function, so I had the students work out sin(x) for various x-values from 0° to 360° (using the unit circle definition). I plotted their points on a grid printed on the overhead transparency, and connected them with a smooth curve drawn on the whiteboard itself. Then I asked the students what would happen if we used angles greater than 360°. Once they realized the function started to repeat itself, I moved the overhead projector one wavelength to the right and traced a second copy of the wave on the whiteboard. It was awesome.