Lessons from History: Teaching with Technology in 100 Years of English Journal Response

I have always shied away from technology. When I would see people reading off of eReaders, Kindles, eBooks etc, I would always become upset. To me, there is nothing better than holding a book in your hands, and being able to physically turn the pages of a book. Or the smell of a book that hasn't been opened in awhile, is a scent that always takes me back to the my childhood library where I first fell in love with English. Those are all things that you can't get when reading off of an electronic device. I will always prefer reading an actual book rather than an electronic one, but after reading this article I can see where technology is going to be very important to incorporate into my future classroom. There were many good points made in this article that I had not even thought of before reading it. Technology in some way has been incorporated into teaching English for awhile now. I never really thought of that because the radio isn't new technology to me, but when it was first invented, well it was their equivalent of a new iPhone launch. Teachers used this new technology to engage their students in what they were learning, just as in my eleven year old sisters classroom, iPads are being used. A quote from this article really stood out to me. It reads, "English teachers too often continue to be stereotyped as conservative traditionalists com-mitted solely to musty books and antique inkwells."and that made me think of the TED talk we watched in class, and it would be a shame if English teachers were limited to a single story.