Technology in the Classroom

     Unfortunately the class I took here at the university with this title did not teach me as much as I would have liked to been taught about using technology in the classroom and how to work with technology as a teaching tool. However some other classes (including this one) have been extremely helpful in my attempt to implement technology in my own classroom! I have had personal experience with how effective technology is in the classroom and I think that teachers need to embrace this upcoming changing classroom environment to better teach future generations.

     What kind of message does it send to young students if schools do not utilize something extremely important to our culture and society as technology? Students will develop the idea that schools are not as advanced as they truly are and they will be underprepared for the real world, in which they will use technology on a daily basis. Technology can help students learn valuable skills they will need in life and their careers.

     Directly relating to one of the technology articles there is some new technology in the works that can help us more efficiently skim and scan pieces of literature. The technology, to be utilized on a smart phone or tablet, uses the front facing camera to track where your eye is looking on the page and automatically scrolls for you when you near the bottom of the page. Amongst other leaps in technology, this one in particular helps with controlling the readers pace and can help the reader practice slower and faster pacing during reading.

     In my practicum experience I brought in my own tablet to use during a lesson and it worked very well. Before the students would drill sight words using notecards and their attention spans would be gone instantly. When I brought notecards up on a tablet they immediately focused in and I haven’t had a management problem with them since.

     As I said earlier in this post technology is so vital for these young generations to get accustomed to because when they group up and are leading our society technology will be even more prevalent in our country and around the globe. Technology also has the capability to unlock student creativity that would have otherwise remained untapped. One computer game called Minecraft is what is known as a sandbox game that allows the user to build whatever he/she wants within a finite world. I have seen videos and read articles about this being incorporated in the classroom and some things the students can produce simply by stacking the blocks in certain formations are extraordinary.

     My future classroom will definitely utilize technology. I aim to use it everyday in every lesson I teach so that the students are exposed to it across a multitude of subjects. In the end technology is a great classroom tool for teachers to master and implement in their teaching, but it can also be a risky business sometimes. The key is knowing when to draw the line that separates technology being helpful for students as a learning tool and where it becomes more of a game instead of learning based.