Pencil Me In

I must admit, the cover of Pencil Me In kind of threw me off.  I was not expecting to be reading an early 1900’s fictional story.  The cover looks so modern and clean.  Spencer did a good job of a metaphorical parallel, how teachers might have felt during the educational transition of the early 20^th century technologies being introduced and where we are today, with moving into modern technology of computers and personal hand-held devices.  I was questioning a few times during my read as to how realistically philosophical, not only the main character was, but also some of the random people he would run into and have conversations with.  That being said, I appreciated Spencer’s parallel implying that technology can be a good thing but it’s not a replacement of teachers or their lessons.  What I enjoyed most from this story was the different personal reactions/interactions of his characters and their dealings with the new technology and working with through it.

Obviously the pen pal curriculums were the 1900’s version of social media.  The problem I had with this parallel to today’s Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube is how different these two types of media are.  Pen pals have the educational advantage of time, making this form much more educational friendly.  Teachers can edit over letters and make sure their student’s spelling, punctuation, and grammar are correct.  The problem with our modern day social media is that it started outside of education as a fun less formal activity, for the most part.  New text language has been created for the digital age, and unless we as educators are willing to start accepting; LOL, CUL8R, BRB, etc. these formats are fighting an uphill battle in our classrooms.  Where I see Spencer’s comparison of computers to pencils and feel some of his characters frustrations, I see my own struggle with some of our game-based learning tools to teacher lead instructions.  Some of our students catch on with games so well yet they miss the next level thinking with them.  So while they might score better on their tests and exams they struggle with understanding how step one connects to step two and so on.  These students find enjoyment in learning “on their own” so I guess I’m noticing there needs to be more development with some of the educational game-based learning software.  But, this is a topic for a different day.

By the end of the book I saw a man that was struggling, in the character Tom Johnson.  He wanted technology and at the same time, by the end he wanted his one room school house with his Aristotle like teacher.  He had been able to reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly of modern technology.  I personally enjoyed the read if for no other reason than it made me feel normal.  I felt I wasn’t the only one struggling with all this new technology yet wanting so badly to be a good educator.  I think if I were to recommend this book to others it would be for the teachers or administrators who are in the in-between of wanting the newest technological aid and yet not sure how to handle it.  That being said, I think it helped me stay interested in new technology realizing that it’s not an easy thing for everyone to master.