. . Reflection # 3 . .



Teaching With Technology

 

            This article deals with teachers’ other jobs besides just “teaching. Teachers are expected to be managers, psychologists, counselors, custodians, and community "ambassadors," not to mention entertainers. The other demands of the classroom are very distracting and consuming; therefore, teachers become frustrated quickly and easily. The article states that technology can be a liberator to help reestablish the role and value of the individual classroom teacher.

            Technology can greatly improve the quality of education. In order for this to happen, two things have to occur: the perspective of the classroom must change to become learner centered and students and teachers must enter into a collaboration or partnership with technology in order to create a "community" that nurtures, encourages, and supports the learning process. However, technology has consistently failed in education due to students' inability to apply their learning. Effective learning requires students to do more than simply respond to stimuli. Instead, learners must actively seek and generate relationships between lesson content and prior knowledge. With the use of technology, teachers are able to integrate many subjects into one lesson and engage the children. When children are engaged and actively involved their work becomes meaningful. However, I do not think that technology alone can greatly improve the quality of education. Teachers and the classroom community also play a significant role. Effective technology-based teaching is more likely the result of teachers' abilities to design lessons based upon robust instructional principles than of the technology.

            There have been two main types of technology in education that we choose to label as "product technologies" and "idea technologies.” Product technologies include: 1) hardware, or machine-oriented, technologies that people most often associate with educational technology, such as the range of audio-visual equipment, both traditional (i.e. film strips, movies, audiocassette players/recorders) and contemporary (i.e. videocassette players/recorders, laserdiscs, computers, CD-ROM) and; 2) software technologies, such as print-based material (i.e. books, worksheets, overhead transparencies) and computer software (i.e. computer-assisted instruction). In contrast, idea technologies do not have such tangible forms. The high school I attended used mostly product technologies. I really only remember watching a lot of movies. We didn’t do a lot on the computers at all. I was never even introduced to PowerPoint until college.

            My idea of an effective technology teacher would be one who combines ideas and product technologies to encourage students to engage in deeper cognitive activity, rather than just memorization of knowledge. An effective would also present information from multiple perspectives and utilizes real world problems in the classroom. An effective technology teacher should also be organized, present valid and appropriate information, and build on previously learned experiences.

            In the future, I hope to utilize technology in my classroom. I want students to be able to use these resources not only to learn, but also to express themselves and be creative while learning. Students learn best when something is meaningful to them. My main goal is to teach students why technology is helpful and how to make the most of it. I do not want students to view technology as a way to cut back on their workload because that it not the case at all. I believe that all the projects I have learned in this course so far will be extremely helpful and beneficial to my students and me in the future. I would like to implement all of them in my curriculum.


Back to Reflection Page