Reading Reflection # 3
1. Can technology improve the quality of education? Why or why not in your opinion?
      In reflecting on this article dealing with teaching with technology I agree with the statement that technology can truley be a teacher's liberator by helping to reestablish the role and value of the individual classroom teacher because beyond planning and implementing instruction teachers have so many other roles that it can be intimidating at times. However, using technology can help to ease the burdern placed on teachers by making some task much easer and faster. I also believe the technology can truley improve the quality of education because it is a great way to engage students in their own learning and also at the same time it is a way to keep student's interests in the topics you are covering by making them more interesting by using power points and streaming videos to take students to places outside the classroom they would most likely not be able to encounter any other way.


2. Why has technology consistently failed to impact education?
     This article says that technology has consistently failed to impact education because the full potential of educational technology can only be realized when educatotrs progress through all five stages (idea and product technologies > familiarization > Utilization > Integration > Reorientation> Evolution), otherwise technology will be misused or discarded and traditionally the role of technology has been limited to the first three stages. I believe this is true because in my experience as a highschool student my professors often did not know much about technology that was availbable to them. I mean our school mandated that they take courses to become familiar with them and they did but it either stopped there or they tried it out in the class once and got frustrated with it so they never used it again. So this shows that they only went through familiarization and a brief period of utilizationa and that was the end of it and that is typical.


3. Compare and Contrast "product" and "idea" technologies. How would you use technology in the classroom?
        This article stated that there are two main types of technology and they are product technologies and idea technologies. Idea technologies are usually represented in or through some product technology. For example simulations are idea technologles that must be realized through a product such as a comptuter. So idea technologies are actually the ideas behind what goes into makeing a new technological product such as a graphing calculator and the idea behind this would be its ability to draw a graph using real time animation so that the teacher can focus on the conceptual understanding of the mathematical function instead of on the student's abiility to draw a graph.
        Personally as a teacher I am going to make use of technology a lot in my curriculum. I believe this is crucial especially in the technological time in which we are now living! The two technologies that I will make the best use of are the internet and microsoft powerpoint because they are so useful in many different situations.
    

4. How did the highschool you attended use technology in the classroom?
       As I just said in the highschool I attended technology was not used as much as I believe it should have been. For the most part the teachers were often intimidated by technology and the students knew more about it then they did and that also intimidated them so they tended to shy away from it!

7. What do you think is thoughtful use of technology in schools? What does it look like?
         I believe that thoughful use of technology in schools would be to get the students familiar with the technology that is available to them and appropriate to their age as soon as possible. In other words get young students used to computer starting in kindergarten with age appropriate activities. I know that the Barry Elementary School is beginning to introduce technology at younger and younger ages. I know that they are beginning to widely use technology especially in the 5th and 6th grades. For example, they are teaching the students how to properly use the internet to research educational topic by way of a Webquest and they are also teaching students how to use power point by having them create an interview with some of their classmates and college students. I believe that this integration of technology into your classroom as a teacher is crucial in today's world especially since we as a society are moving ahead with technological advances at a very fast pace.