"But it IS part of your curriculum."

I've spent the last couple of days at school in and out of classrooms and labs plugging in and imaging computers, climbing under tables and jamming cords through the holes in computer desks, keeping a list of how many ethernet cords have magically disappeared over the summer, and, well, you get the idea.  (This is truly the absolute worst part of my job.)  Naturally this means I've already seen a lot of teachers as they set up their classrooms.  I had one conversation in particular with a teacher, a pretty strong tech user, that kind of frustrated me.

After the "how was your summer" chat...
Teacher: How do you think it's going to be now without a 5th grade technology class?
Me: It will be interesting.  I think we can do more integration.
Teacher: I'm just worried that it's going to take away from instructional time for our curriculum if we have to teach them how to use things like Prezi.

I'm not proud of my response, so instead I'll tell you what I should have said:
"But things like Prezi ARE part of your curriculum!" 

Why do teachers continue to refer to technology as something that takes away from their instructional time?  Have we still not learned that process and skills are more important, or at least equally as important, as content?  (By the way, I do work in a district that gives product and process grades on report cards.)  Are we still so ignorant that we believe taking the three and a half minutes it takes to provide an overview of Prezi to our students isn't beneficial to them?

When is the last time you had to rattle off the facts of the life of an Early American Explorer?  And when is the last time you had to send a professional email?

We need to stop thinking of technology instruction as something separate.  It is part of your every day life.  And it IS part of your curriculum.  And if we're going that far, maybe plugging in your computer should be part of your classroom set up, right there with hanging the poster about taking risks, and not something separate the Tech Teacher or IT support need to be doing, eh?