So Why Technology?

I cannot honestly say that there is only one driver for technology enhanced learning or that it is always the same driver. It is more of a flexible notion that keeps changing from semester to semester, if not from class to class. It definitely started as curiosity, and I must say I am still fascinated by new discoveries I make almost daily through web surfing. Does it always work? Of course not. I get frustrated when students cannot accomplish a task because the internet suddenly went down. But as teachers, we are/should be always equipped with plan B.
So, curiosity was the first step. It soon turned into necessity. My students need a lot of feedback on their writing which I cannot always do in class or even during my office hours due to the lack of time and busy schedule. I decided to try Google Docs and multiple add-ons. From that I moved to Google Forms as the way of testing their reading skills and revising vocabulary. Here the driver was sustainability. Instead of using large amount of paper to photocopy supplementary material, I could push it to students through Google Forms and recycle it as many times as I wanted. I could check where they scored low and repeat the questions (after some revision). And most importantly, students had all their handouts, exercise, activities etc. stored neatly in Google Drive (no more cases of "teacher, I lost this paper"). And finally opportunity. Opportunity to mix genders in online classroom environment. Our college is coeducational in everything but boys and girls sitting next to each other during classes. I found it frustrating that I cannot ask a stronger student to help a weaker one without considering their gender. But online collaboration made it possible for a boy and a girl to work together on an assignment without sitting next to each other.
And I think this is what technology is all about: creating opportunities that we as teachers constantly need to revise.