Is technology a gift or a burden?

My husband and I were talking earlier about when we first started teaching.  I started in 1996 and he started the following year.  Our school had a mimeograph machine that looked like this:

Yikes!  For real.  I remember using this.  Unbelievable.  Now our copiers staple and collate, but of course jam all the time.  So that brings me to the topic of today's blog:

Is technology a gift or a burden?

This is also the guiding question for a fun lesson that students really get into because it relates to their lives in so many ways.  Also, their knee-jerk reaction is "of course technology is a gift!"  But once we start having discussions about modern technology they realize that.....hmmmm.....maybe all of the devices that I have are not so great. Maybe social media is not all it's cracked up to be........

I set up the front wall of my room with two signs on opposite ends of the wall.  One sign reads "Technology is a gift" and the other sign reads "Technology is a burden."  As students walk in they are given a post-it note and the guiding question "Is technology a gift or a burden?" is displayed on my smart board.  Students answer the question (anonymously) on the post-it note and then post it (ha ha) on the side of the wall that matches their opinion.  

The class discussion that ensues after all students hang their post-its could take an entire class period itself.  Depending on how much time I have, sometimes I actually let it go on for a half period or more. But usually I do not have time (shocker!) for more than a 5-10 minute discussion.  I do have an eBoard and have also used edmodo and I always tell kids they can feel free to post comments on either if we do not have time to address their comments in class.

I then segue into the content portion of my lesson.  I distribute a handout that looks like this

Then I show students the images on a power point and they have to decide (individually) what they think the image is and what it was used for.  This is fun because some of the kids really have some outrageous ideas about what the images are!

Then I segue into a station activity.  There are seven stations and each one contains a folder with the corresponding image and information about what it was and what it was used for.  Depending on my class, sometimes I have the kids physically get up and move to another station and other times I just rotate folders.

After kids have moved through all seven stations, we go over the handout using a power point presentation and conclude with the question:  Why would this group of inventions be considered "revolutionary"?

For homework, kids create an advertisement for a particular invention (either from the lesson or a modern-day invention) and the ad must reflect whether the invention is considered a gift or a burden.  I choose exemplars from this assignment to create a hallway bulletin board.

This is one of my favorite lessons to teach all year.  Students who, at the end of the year fill out class evaluations, have mentioned this as a favorite as well.  

Click here or the image below to see the full lesson plan, student handout, teacher key, power point presentation, entrance activity signs and homework assignment.