Monday, September 29, 2008

green group post

Throughout my lifetime all the technology have experienced I feel has made me realize what is good and bad technology. Especially in college I have really seen some teachers misuse technology. I have seen what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, like you cannot teach an entire lesson with a power point; as I said in my technology in the classroom blog you need to do different activities in the classroom. You do not have one type of learner; you have many different levels of students especially in the special ed department where I will be teaching. Also you need to think about a child’s attention spend, yes we know we cannot teach all interesting information but we need to try and find the most interesting way to teach it, to keep a child interacting with the lesson. If we just have them hosted in front of a computer all day every day how do we expect them to learn?
There are some similarities between my two post in the way that, I didn’t use computers all my education career and I don’t think my students or your students should either. For example you go into a grocery store with a certain amount of money you leave your calculator, you paper and pen at home, so how are you going to keep track of the total? You need to use metal math that cannot be taught by sitting at a computer. Our students need to learn some things without a computer, whether its math, science, etc. I mean yes dissecting things was sometimes gross by I think doing that, looking under a microscope helped me understand things a lot better then on a computer. Yes a computer view and a real live view are both visual ways of figuring the info out but as I said before you have to have different ways of teaching and different ways the students can learn so they can make it though this tough ol' world.

4 comments:

christina lanahan said...

It's true, people are very dependent on technology to "think" for them now. As teachers, we don't want this in our classroom.
I like your point about the different learning styles. There are some students that won't benefit from too much technology bc they are hands on learners. Good point, and Brownie points for tying in our current classroom lesson to your blog! haha :)

Greg S. said...

Reliance is a powerful thing. We must learn to not limit but appropriate our technology use, especially in the classroom. You address this passionately and clearly.

Matt M said...

I agree that over dependence on technology is not desirable at all. I also completely agree regarding the PowerPoint reading educators. I consider that the prime example of inappropriate technology usage. Technology is a tool, not a crutch.

Prof. Lohnes said...

Nice point about the learning styles, and it's an important one when thinking about the "why should I use technology anyway, given the obstacles?" (And thanks, Christina, for pointing out the classroom-blog connection. Definitely a good thing!)

It seems as though a lot of students in class haven't had appropriate examples of technology in their classes, and/or haven't seen a broad range of technology uses (just PowerPoint and Word, mainly). I wonder, if you all had exposure to appropriate and varied technology integration, do you think your current thinking would be different?