Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

This week for our Tech Ed inquiry we have decided to share our own experiences with technology shortcuts and how they have affected our own learning.  For myself, I went through school before the age of technology took over.  Technology played a very small roll in my years of grade school.  I remember I was in grade 7 when my family got internet for the first time.  This definitely had an impact on my learning as far as research projects went because all of a sudden we were able to look things up easily from home.  Yet I still would turn to books first and it took a while before the internet became my go to for looking up information.  iPad’s, tablets, and Chromebooks were not a thing yet, so the only technology in schools were computers in the computer lab.  We didn’t have the learning games and resources that are available today.  Our computer time was focused on learning how to type properly, and learn how to edit our work.  I think there must have been a basic spell check in some word programs, but I do not have memory of using them a lot.  We still had to edit our work on our own even if it was typed up on the computer.  There was no talk to text or audio support for reading.  I think I benefited greatly from learning these skills before technology took over.  I learned how to edit my work before tech tools did it automatically.  I would  say that I have gotten lazy since technology has made it so  I don’t have to think about those little details anymore.  Whether it is a word I constantly spell wrong, or grammatical error I always make, right clicking to fix the mistake without having to think about it means I don’t experience the process of learning that happens when I have to figure out what is wrong and how to correct it.  There are grammar rules that I have forgotten because I never have to think about them.  While this technology is convenient and saves me time, it definitely hasn’t helped my intelligence!