Teaching students how to think historically is at the center of my teaching. It is one of the main motivations behind choosing teaching as my second career. In my previous career in the newspaper printing industry, I witnessed and participated in the dramatic changes technology would bring to newspaper printing. Toward the end of my tenure in the printing field, I saw clearly that technology would render my vocation obsolete. I experienced the rapid changes, transformations, and convulsions that can occur when groundbreaking technologies are integrated into a certain field. Along the way, I also learned how easily one can adopt technologies as a silver bullet solution to a vexing problem only to add another layer of complexity with little or no benefit to the process.

I bring this sensibility to my teaching practice at Cheboygan Area High School in Northern Michigan. I push myself to be open to new tools that could enhance my instruction and facilitate meaningful and authentic learning for my students. By default, I am also a skeptic. Knowing how to evaluate a technology for its potential usefulness and utility in the classroom is essential for all educators, especially those who take the lead in integrating technology in their schools.

"good instructional design recognizes that all technologies and associated strategies used in an academic course are part of an ecosystem that can be easily set off course without consideration of who might be impacted and denied full inclusion and participation in the learning community."

When it comes to technology in my history classes, the essential question is always, how will this technology enhance my students' experience in learning history, especially the historical thinking skills that are arguably the central objective for any history class. I see technology as an extraordinarily wide prism encompassing everything from textbooks to Chromebooks, cutting and pasting on a Google Doc to cutting paper and pasting it on a poster board. No matter the nature of the technology used, the question is will it empower a student to master their objective or interfere with it?

Additionally, and arguably more important, is exploring ways a particular technology can be used to make my instruction universally accessible. And that goes for the inverse of that question-- in what ways does a particular technology create barriers?

I believe good instructional design recognizes that all technologies and associated strategies used in an academic course are part of an ecosystem that can be easily set off course without consideration of who might be impacted and denied full inclusion and participation in the learning community.