How far behind the times am I?

This should also be titled, “Or what I can learn from my students.”

I am a pessimist by nature. I admit it. I have this negative streak a mile wide. I always feel like more could be done and in a better way. Maybe I’m not a pessimist, maybe I’m just never quite satisfied because I know the world can be a better place.

The point? I often think that students lack in their ability to be creators. They seem to take shortcuts and take the easy way out. Usually, their use of technology is novice level at best, and I have little to learn from what I see them do. It is mostly me showing them how to do things.

However, today I was inspired by a student who created a video for his senior project. He just switched his product and topic and was very excited to get to work. He showed me how to do video-in-video using iMovie. I had no idea this was possible. Then I saw him editing the video on youtube and using all these tools that I didn’t even know existed.

So now I’m optimistic that students can learn new things on their own and trump me with their use of technology, which is my hope. But I’m also pessimistic. If I don’t know this stuff about iMovie and youtube, what else don’t I know? I was going to draw this giant image on the chalkboard showing how much we can actually know about everything, which is very little.

I’m inspired as I continue on this journey of education. I now have a new toolkit to share with students, and I know that each day, I may learn something new and cool from my students.