I am an English teacher and technology enthusiast. Let me correct that. I majored in Language Arts education which makes me much more hippy and warm/fuzzy than your basic English major.

Now that is cleared up, let me tell you about the family discussion:

My husband came home very frustrated because he just found out that his infamous factoring project had been tainted. You see, two girls came to him and claimed that they could not finish the project because they did not know how to do the last 50 problems, and they did not want to cheat and use the website like the other students did. They said, “We did not want to cheat.” He asked them what website they were talking about. They took him to http://www.algebrahelp.com/calculators/equation/factoring/ .

This is where we began our discussion. He made the statement, “If they can just go to websites and type in the equations and it spits out the answers, why should I ever give homework again? I am going to have to do everything in class. It puts the kid without the internet at a disadvantage.”

Our discussion got heated as I asked him about his factoring project only to find out it consisted of 70 problems. My response was that he should not penalize kids for finding the answers, because in the information age, we should applaud the research and ingenuity. Also, I thought that 70 problems were too many for anyone. Finally, I asked how many times he makes them write something that defends the steps taken to solve that particular problem. Needless to say, he did not like any of those responses.

So how do I defend the use of technology to teachers who constantly see it as a way to cheat the system? How do we have authentic assessment that provides a fair opportunity to all? What are some assessments (math in particular) that are rich yet simple for the teacher to grade?

I know some of the answers I gave him. I just need to know what the world thinks.