I was born in the early 1990’s, which allowed me to have a unique experience with the overnight boom of technology. Growing up, Neopets and Hit Clips were the talk of the playground, and I treasured my obnoxious orange Walkman. Pretty soon, I didn’t have time to take care of my Neopets anymore because I was sending text messages on my Razr phone, and my Walkman became obnoxious not just for its color, but for its size compared to my iPod Nano. And a few short years later, my Razr phone was a fossil compared to the revolutionary iPhone. I’ve witnessed the evolution of technology and reaped the benefits and hindrances of technology on our everyday lives. Our devices have increased the awkwardness of small-talk and drawn people away from face-to-face conversation, but our devices have also drawn more people together than before. Technology has allowed people to create communities where ideas can be shared with the click of a button, and a place where our work can be seen. Without technology, we would not have the community of learners that we have today.

I am an English teacher, and technology is an integral part of my classroom and daily lessons. Technology is a valuable asset to a writer—and students learn this very quickly. I’ve had my students create blogs where they reflect upon what they’ve learned, or where they share their opinions about the latest young adult novel craze. Beyond using the blogs as an assessment tool, these blogs present students with an opportunity to be published. Once they’ve proofread their writing (not always perfectly), their classmates and teachers are able to view their words and their opinions. The student is now a published writer. One of the most common questions in a secondary classroom is some variation of the following: “Why are we doing this?” Technology gives students a purpose for creating, and an outlet to share their work and be heard.

With that being said, our words can be heard all over the virtual world. Blogs aren’t the only media where digital publishing occurs. With the help of social media, people of all ages can share their thoughts in less than 140 characters, in a paragraphed rant, or without words at all: a picture or short video sends a message loud and clear, too. Social media has found its way into the classroom: phones used to be frowned upon in schools, but now they are welcomed for educational purposes. Students are writing Tweets to learn how to compose short, concise messages without any fluff. Teachers use educational variations of Facebook to post information about their classes and assignments. Classes are screening YouTube videos to jumpstart a discussion or to illustrate a lesson taught in class. Technology is allowing students to become more engaged in their learning and form connections from the classroom to the world beyond the school and the screen.

Yes, I’ve witnessed and experienced the impact of technology as a teacher, but I’ve also witnessed and experienced the impact of technology as a student. My college experience would have been vastly different without technology. My mom and my professors would tell me about a far-off time when research papers were composed on type-writers, and all research was conducted through books (how did people survive without Spark Notes, Wikipedia, and JSTOR?!). Even communicating with classmates and friends has been affected by technology. When I was in college, I would send a group Facebook message to my classmates about our assignments, and I could often receive instantaneous responses thanks to the accessibility of social media through Smartphones. By the time I became an upperclassman and spent the majority of my week with English Education majors, those messages turned into shared articles about sentence diagramming and audio clips of Old English and screenshots of what Snapchats from Shakespeare would look like. I learned so much from my friends in my major through technology, and I was able to access a plethora of information in a matter of seconds thanks to virtual academic journals (and Google. Academic journals don’t have doodles on their home page, which is a shame).

Technology allows us to build a community of learners, and a community of creators. One of my favorite creations born from technology are new words. If we didn’t have cameras in our phones that are better quality than most cameras, we also wouldn’t have the word selfie. Social media also allowed for bae to take on a new meaning other than the Danish word for poop, and perfection is now associated with a new adjective: on fleek. Yes, I’ve used these words, and yes, these words are silly, but they also represent the evolution of our language and how a community of people can catapult the evolution of the English language and its slang. Part of why I wanted to become an English teacher was because language is fascinating and always evolving—and technology is helping to propel that evolution.

I am part of so many online communities. We all are. From professional organizations to social media groups, we are more connected than ever. If I find a great lesson plan, I can add it to my collection of pins for other Pinterest users to see. If there’s a double rainbow after a torrential downpour, I can document nature’s beauty on my Instagram account. If I watched a thought-provoking TED Talk, I can post the link on my Facebook page. I am able to access newspapers and magazines on a tablet or phone—even though nothing can replace the printed word, more people are able to access news and current events than ever before. Technology is helping people of all ages learn and grow, and it is helping our society to grow as well. It’s refreshing to see students be excited about learning because of the ability to access information and share their work, and I enjoy sharing my ideas and learning from other people’s ideas. Thank you, technology, for helping us to establish a greater community of learners: where we can be the teacher and the student with a simple click.