Teachers are being asked to adapt to a stunning transformation in technology where we have little time to understand new technologies before even newer ones emerge. Nevertheless, this creates a opportunity for the teacher to simulate real-world uses of technology in the classroom which will give them practical skills for which they can use in future employment settings. On the other hand, we still have very little idea of the psychological impact of many of these new technologies.

The speaker Jessie Miller put forth a strong argument for arguably maximum inclusion of technology in the classroom, viewing as ‘embracing normalcy’, and that technology works ‘for the purpose facilitating something’. This requires teachers to judiciously determine when tech can enhance a lesson or improve communication of a lesson’s objectives. Multimodality is a reality in the contemporary world of business and employment (i.e. video conferencing, video business proposals, webpages/blogs) and we would be doing our students a disservice if we did not prepare them for this. To the speaker’s credit, he acknowledged that certain times and spaces were unacceptable for devices and advocated a ‘culture of time and place’. I agreed with his assertion that this is an opportunity for student accountability where students can collectively police each other to avoid losses of privileges. We have all experienced feelings of burn out from technology and I would build in ‘zero tech’ days in my classroom to combat this. Moreover, teachers can employ the Premack principle where cell phone use can be used as a reward/break after quality production by students in a lesson. However, the speaker admittedly stated this technology is aimed at kids. I am less comfortable with social media app usage in education. For example, Twitter and its 280-character limit practically lends itself to shallow, superficial analysis and it is unknown whether this format has an effect on the probability of the exchange of vitriolic comments. The pitfalls of this technology for teachers and students alike is great, with potential loss of careers, income and academic suspension one impulsive moment away. Rather, I can see Twitter as a passive resource to view trends in a field among peers.