My love for technology and digital education has been slowly growing since getting my hands on the family computer to the day I bought my first set of VR goggles. I feel like technology is somewhat of a sibling, we have grown up together, faced many challenges and both are continually changing, morphing into something new.

From my first day of school to right now completing my masters degree, I have witnessed technology enter education and change it dramatically. As a student going through this metamorphosis I feel at ease and excited. As a student you get to ride the wave, overcome the challenges with the safety of knowing how to succeed. However as a teacher, this continuing and inevitable process of change is not as comforting. There is still so much uncertainty about how to experience success. Best practice is still being developed, these are shaky, unprecedented times for educators. These thoughts are what motivate and drive my interests in digital education and this particular course. I not only want to learn for myself, how to be a strong educator in a digital world but I also want to be apart of conversations and the rhetoric that will drive future decisions. Inevitably, technology is creating change and I want to have the right knowledge and skills to be apart of the process to ensure it changes education for the better.

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During a lesson today I was explaining to my Prep class that they were to create a video book report for the school wide reading challenge. After modeling an example, one student put her hand up and said “You didn’t say, don’t forget to subscribe.”

So many questions and ideas came rushing into my head about the student’s comment. My first thought was, why did she say that? How does she know that is what people say at the end of some videos? Probably because she watches YouTube. But only Vloggers say that type of thing. What kind of videos is this girl watching? What kind of vlogs do 5 year olds watch anyway? No idea. Wait – does she think this video will be posted on YouTube? I didn’t say that it would, maybe she just assumes that all videos eventually end up on online. Wow she really must watch a lot of videos. Stop, stop – does she actually know what subscribe means? Maybe she just thinks that is something you say at the end of every video like when you sign off on a letter or say good afternoon to the teacher at the end of the day.

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