I just received notice that my proposal for a session at the Illinois Reading Council Annual Conference was accepted. I’m excited – a state-level conference is still a big deal to me – and a little nervous. I have presented at this conference twice. The first time was a few years pre-pandemic. My session on content area writing strategies was modestly attended (10-12 people or so, several of whom were colleagues of mine) and went well. None of it was controversial or challenging. I was aiming for practical value to teachers. My second session, two years ago, was aimed at teachers of emergent bilinguals. I attempted to suggest the use of some similar strategies, mostly focusing on a realia activity that made use of a “grab bag” – where participants choose an item from a table and then write about it. It was sparsely attended and felt unenthusiastic, tepid, mundane. . . like I was fulfilling court-ordered community service hours.

In other words, my past two sessions were boring and maybe useless. And I want to dazzle this time.

I have decided to post and share some of my thinking about this presentation to invite comment and participation from the many people out there who know more than me about this topic. I am actively learning about these topics and others – I’m a first year doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Curriculum and Instruction program. That means that I’ve learned how little I really know. Feel free to teach me.

My proposed session roughly matches the title of this post, and the blurb discusses ethical choices in the classroom about the use of technology. I mention that teachers might want to explore “old school” strategies. And that’s about it. Of course, conference blurbs need to be pithy. For me, they are often aspirational as well – more than once I have proposed a session at a conference, forgotten what I have proposed, and then created the presentation months later based on how the issue played out in my classroom and my most recent thinking about it. Rarely do I write a conference proposal with a finished presentation in hand. That sounds too easy.

I see this post as the first of many on this topic. I don’t want to blather on endlessly, so I’m going to disambiguate a little, and then tentatively wrap it up.

As far as I see it right now, the topic will be divided into these chunks:

• Teaching with social media and its affordances
• Teaching with mobile devices
• Teaching with Google and Microsoft
• Teaching with AI
• Teaching with online games

I think I will split all of these into “for the teacher” and “for the students” uses and abuses. I think the big criteria will be privacy, health and wellness, utility, equity/inclusivity, and cost.

Right now, as I dig into the research (which is monumental at this point with such a broad scope), I want to cast a wide net and read as much as I can handle. I’ll narrow the topic when I get tired. I’m old, so that might happen quickly. But I have a lot to say about this stuff, and I hope you join me in the continuing conversation.

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash