Thursday, September 2, 2010

"If we teach today like we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." -John Dewey

Technology in the classroom seems to be a very important and complex topic these days. With the technology growing and the generation of students being more dependent on technology, questions are being raised upon how schools and educators can incorporate enough technology to keep their students attention as well as get the information needed across. The days of Sesame Street began our journey with implementing technology with education. An entertaining show full of fun characters and songs and colors that just so happens to be packed full of educational topics would excite a young child and their parents. But how can any teacher compete with Sesame Street.. let alone iPhones and google, and the national geographic channel. Well if there's a will, there's a way, and I believe teachers should be updated on technology in order to introduce these technologically young minds to the important information they need to learn in school. 

This slide show of quotes was interesting and completely relevant to the topic of this discussion.

Today is the day of digital media, and tomorrow is the day of the new updated version. Every day a new company is coming out with the bigger and better product, which most likely is a new trendy piece of technology. The days of writing with pencil and paper are becoming more and more extinct. Children are learning to type quicker than they are learning to write, and more and more of their attention spans are getting lost into space when a teacher sits in front of the classroom and points to words on a white board. Although this is slightly unfortunate to those old fashioned teachers, the truth is, it is reality. 

"Technology and digital media are everywhere and integrated into every aspect of individuals lives" (Gunter, 11). This idea brings up another important concept. If digital media is EVERYWHERE, shouldn't we be teaching students how to use it everywhere so that they can be successful? "Using technology can be motivational, provide unique, effective, and powerful opportunities for teaching and learning - including skill-building practice, real world problem solving, interactive learning, and linking learners to a multitude of instructional resource" (Gunter, 11). Now a days, students can easily just pull out their iPhone or droid and simply ask into the microphone the question they need answered, and sure enough the answer pops up. So by using different media in the classroom, they can find a more exciting and resourceful way of using technology while learning as well. 

I personally enjoy the upgrading technology and find that the next generation will have more technology introduced, so it is of our best interest to keep up with it as well and incorporate it is as much as possible into our classroom. 


   Shelly, G. & Gunter, G & Gunter, R. (2010). Teacher Discovering Computers Integrating technology and Digital Media in the Classroom. (6th Ed.) Cengage Learning
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2 comments:

  1. SamanthaWSeptember 8, 2010 at 7:48 PM

    Maggie,
    I agree with your comment about how the days of writing with a pencil and paper are becoming more and more extinct. This is so true. Each year technology is improving and changing. When I was school I hand wrote all of my papers. Now a days this isn't so, because of the high usage of computers, Ipads, etc many students are having to type their papers.

    Because of the increase in technology each year I agree that it is extremely important for teachers to integrate technology into the school system. Many teachers may be hesitant about integrating technology but as you said the truth is, this is the reality. One reason why these teachers are hesitant is because they are not familiar with the new technology, so they are not comfortable teaching it. This is when training on the use of ways to integrate technology into the curriculum comes in to play as well as training using the technology. I believe through training it would change the way teachers feel about the integration.

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  2. Megan JeanSeptember 9, 2010 at 3:47 PM

    You mention how the days of pencil and paper are becoming more and more extinct. As a first grade teacher, that is a very interesting topic for me. Right now I am teaching my students how to write and form letters, how to make completer sentences, and how to read out of a book. Are these all things that they will stop using in a few years? I would assume that they would at least need the basics to get through life, but should I be teaching them how to type and type sentences on the computer instead? It seems drastic to me, but I wonder if I will soon be giving all the students spelling tests on their ipads. Soon that will be a school supply!

    I was also thinking about your mention of using different medias in the classroom. While I know this would be the best for our students, and maybe not the most convenient for teachers I get frustrated with how hard it is for some teachers to access these different medias. It sounds easy, "just implement more media in your classroom" but when you don't have the knowledge, or the resources, this makes adding technology to your classroom a terrible task. Is there a way to make the change easier for teachers?

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