This week, we had the pleasure of hearing from Jesse Miller. He spoke about a variety of things surrounding technology, including meme culture, generational divide, privacy, and phone management. This topic of conversation tends to stress me out a little bit because of the lack of clarity on rules for teachers on social media. Jesse touched on this subject and his reasoning was to do with the wiggle room and grey-area between district, school, and classroom rules. As technology is ever changing, the rules will never be crystal clear. I think the biggest take away is just use common sense and separate your personal and professional life as much as possible.

Something that resonated with me was the conversation around managing cellphones in the classroom. The battle between when to engage and embrace technology or when to police the phone use in a classroom is a fine line that likely depends on age, class, and specific groups of students. Especially since we are going to be teachers who grew up with technology, it is important for us to continue to understand and learn about what kids are doing on the internet. This can open the doors for communication if a student needs help or needs to disclose something regarding internet safety. We have a job to inform kids about being safe online!

As I look into the future, I wonder how much communication and technology will change from the beginning of my career to the end? I wonder what problems will arise in the classroom as things change? Will younger students have phones? These are just some of the questions that arose from Jesse’s presentation!