"It's Not About the Technology"
In Kelly Hine's post entitled "It's Not About the Technology", she gives her opinion on how teachers should use the technology that is becoming more and more available to them and that the teachers who are given the opportunity to have something like a Smartboard, for example, they should learn how to properly use it in a way that will help the students learn.
I completely agree with her 100 percent! The teachers who went through the schooling process and didn't have the opportunities to learn how to use the technology that we have today have indeed learned how to use other tools that were available to them at the time and they have become exceptionally good at what they do. So as the teachers of the future, we should become just as good, but with the technology and tools that we have accessible to us. Learning how to use these thing will in the end benefit our students and help them to better understand what exactly we are teaching them.
Karl Fisch: Is It Okay to Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?
In Karl Fisch's award winning post, he asks "Is It Okay to Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?", well I for one completely agree with him that no it is definitely not okay. As teachers we must be willing to learn these new technologies that are becoming available to us. If we are willing to learn how to use them, then it shows our students that they should also be willing to learn it to. He uses a great example of when he was a math teacher and he would have parent-teacher conferences with the parents of the students who were struggling, most of the time a parent would say "Well I was never any good at math either.", but the parents would say it in a way that they seemed almost proud of that statement. It's okay to not understand computers, but we all must be willing to learn how to use them and one day we will understand them!
Gary Hayes Social Media Count
Watching the numbers grow on Gary Hayes Social Media Count is amazing to me! Nowadays everyone and there mother has a Facebook and a Twitter account, but I remember when none of this social media stuff even existed. I wasn't even allowed to have a Facebook until about a year ago. Everyone has a cellphone these days, even my ten year old brother. I didn't have one until I was about 15 and that was only because my parents were divorced so I was going back and forth between their houses and having a cell phone made it easier for us to talk to each other.
This social media count shows us that technology is growing at a very fast rate and as up-and-coming teachers we need to know and understand how to use everything that is available to us that can better help us teach our students. This is so exciting to me! Ever since my father gave me my first computer I have tried to learn as much as possible about how to use it. I am so fortunate to be in EDM310 and be able to actually learn how to properly make a blog, use twitter in an affective way, use Google Docs (which, by the way, is amazing), and there is so much more to come!
A Vision of Students Today
This video, A Vision of Students Today, shows that students today use technology in a way that is not very helpful. Facebooking in class doesn't help us to learn. If teachers would integrate the use of technology in their classrooms, I believe that it would make the students want to do the work assigned to them.
Technology can either hurt or help us! I plan on finding better ways to use all of these new technologies to help me teach. When I graduate and have a classroom of my own, I would really love to incorporate using computers and other technology that can work in my favor and create a better learning environment for my students.
Willing to learn. That's the key.
ReplyDeleteI think you are correct that using technology in the classroom would increase students' interest in the class.
"I would really love to incorporate using computers and other technology that can work in my favor and create a better learning environment for my students." Do it!