Thoughts Chapters 1-3

Technologies role in education is something that is going to happen without any debate.  When most of our students can’t go through half the day without going online, it means we need to incorporate this into how we educate them.  As educators we need to prepare our students for life in the real world.  The life outside of school is using technology in an enormous amount of ways.  The jobs that our students will have are not even created yet today.  This is because technology is an ever changing and fast moving thing.  There are many helpful resources on the Web that can increase student’s ability to understand topics and to be able to look at things in a different way that maybe they can relate to better.  Students today are growing up in an age of technology that looks like it has no end in sight.  As an educator you also have to be cautious of what your students are using the technology for.  The Internet has many bad facets to it whether it is untrue information or distasteful material.  That is why teachers have to be careful on how their students are using this resource.  I feel that technology can help in many ways to educate our students and make it easier for them to relate and understand because they are using it at an alarming rate in their every day lives.

            As a future teacher I will have to stay updated with the new technologies of education.   This will be difficult because it is always changing.  I will also have to be creative in the ways I can incorporate it into my classroom.  Two of the chapters that I read had to deal with class blogs.  This is a unique and different way to get students information and have them give information back.  There are different levels of blogging that range from simple to complex.  A term that this book used a lot was the read/write Web.  This is referring to the part of the internet that you can blog or just post and comment on ideas.  This is a useful and powerful tool because students are able to create ideas and then share them to the world.  As a teacher I can utilize this tool and have the students learn in a different way then just lecturing.  This allows the students to come up with ideas themselves.  Students can then read to ideas of their other classmates and comment on them to have sort of a discussion.  One of the best ways for students to learn is to analyze something and reflect.  This allows the students to come up with their own realizations about the topics.  The students will then truly be thinking about it and putting their own thoughts down.  By doing this in a blog is allows them to be published throughout the entire world.  This shows that technology is making the world smaller with its advances.  Since schools and homes are becoming more and more computer friendly it will be easier as a teacher to incorporate this into my classes and allow me to use this educational resource.  There are many diverse ways I can use a blog in my classroom and by doing so I can keep many students informed and in a non-traditional way that can keep the students more interested and wanting to learn.