Let’s face it. Most of the times, our rejection or resistance to new technologies in our classes is not because we are only concerned about the pedagogical value or the academic standards we swore to protect and keep; most of the time, we are afraid what the consequences might be if we fail to learn new technology in time. Why should we be afraid of technology? I will list below some of the genuine concerns of some of my fellow teachers and myself when we first started using tablets in our classrooms:

“What if the students turned on the camera and started taking pictures of us and post those on some social media site, to make fun of us?”

“Most of the students know how to use a tablet way better than I do, so what happens when I lose my role as ’the expert in class’?”

“Doesn’t that mean that we need to work extra hours preparing material for it? Are they going to pay us to do that? We are already underpaid.”

“It’s all bull***; we have always learned the stuff we know the same way. They can learn these technological monkey tricks later in college.”

“I am already using visual aids, audio and many other things in my class. What difference is this tablet going to make.”

“It’s just a marketing tool the school is using to tell parents we are a technologically advanced school, nothing more. Don’t worry; it is just going to be a textbook on screen.”

What if they play games, access bad sites, log in to Facebook, or just surf the net while we are teaching? How can we control a class like that?

There are many more concerns that I did not mention here, but I think I made my point. There were answers to most of these questions. Some were right, and some were wrong. Some were not correct just right off the bat; we needed more time to experiment with that new technology. However, the point is that most of us can get afraid of new technology and resist it because we believe it might jeopardize our job security or something like that. What I believe is that technology just gave me a boost to have daily motivation to learn new things, try to apply them, the thrill to see the look on the student’s faces, destroy some educational models and build them from scratch. Technology has just made teaching more exciting and rewarding than ever.