Post 6

As it stated in the video, education has a different purpose now, than it did before. The world we are preparing them for will require students to build, create and problem solve in an active environment. No longer can we expect students to sit still, listen be quiet and ask that they remember all the information and regurgitate it for an assessment. We as teachers have to find a way to incorporate the technology, which WILL BE required as a tool for careers, into our curriculums in and out of the classroom. I find that more and more, teachers are more willing to incorporate technology into the classroom, but have a hard time finding the right way to do so because we want to make sure it is relevant and effective, and isn’t a waste of time or becomes a distraction. This is the “catch” that teachers must be aware of and address appropriately.

I have visited a local school district this year which assigned iPads to each student in the school. They have 1:1 technology. We are about to visit another school district in about a week that uses Google classroom. Both districts, as I have seen and am sure to expect, have issues with the use of technology in the classroom. There will always be times when students become bored, or distracted by the technology in front of them, it is how we deal with it, that will make a difference. Especially in society today, we are obsessed with ‘instant gratification’. This is no different with students in our classroom. The instantaneousness of technology is a great advantage and hindrance at the same time. With technology sitting right in front of us, and a thought enters our head, we go right to the technology to log in to a website to satisfy our hunger for information. This is great, but what about when students should be working on an assignment, and they think of something unrelated, use the resource in front of them, and become distracted with an off topic task? That is up to the teacher to decide how to handle this. We can teach students that ‘multi-tasking’ is a useful skill to have, but we have to make sure they understand how to do it appropriately and effectively. An increased use of technology can be a fantastic addition to the student’s lives within the education world and in the real-world as well, but only if we teach them how to do so diligently.