Red Group - Integration of Everyday Technology

I think that I tend to not think of everyday pieces of technology (cell phones, blogs, video games, etc...) when asked to incorporate technology because I have never personally used any of these technologies in my own classroom experience. I have never had a teacher that incorporated cell phones and wikis into the lesson plan. Many of the teachers that I had in high school and at the college level were older and barely enjoyed using the computer/Internet to complete work. There was no way that they were going to try to understand how to use iPods and wikis to integrate them into the lesson plan. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I think that it is very comfortable and easy for us as future teachers to rely heavily on what our own teachers did. They were and still are our models of what we consider good and bad teachers and we tend to want to pick up the habits of the teachers that we believe are "good" at their job. Because even the teachers that I considered to be great did not use these particular technologies, I guess I just assume that they cannot be integrated into the classroom. I also think that some people may be hesitant to use technologies such as iPods and cell phones in the classroom because we are always being harped on to not use these technologies in class. Students are so used to hearing "Keep all electronic devices away until the end of class or until the end of the day" that I think many of them just assume that there cannot be an academic advantage to using them in the classroom when they go onto becoming teachers themselves.

I generally believe that the technology we use in our everyday lives can be successfully incorporated into the curriculum. In an increasingly electronic and technology-driven world, I think that it would be almost foolish of us as teachers to not take advantage of the opportunities that are right in front of us. I can fully understand where some teachers may be critical of using such technologies as cell phones, iPods, and social networking sites because there will always be students that use these technologies in an appropriate manner for the lesson. I just think that the possibilities are endless in how teachers can integrate this technology into the curriculum. I think that many students, myself included, often become bored with constantly using Microsoft Word/PowerPoint or the Internet at its most basic level to facilitate learning. So many children today are enthralled in their cell phones and video games that we, as teachers, should take advantage of. We should show our students that they can use these technologies to advance their learning. I think that many students would enjoy the learning process so much more if they could use technology that interests them. I think that it would be quite amazing to show students that the iPod they rely on for music can be used to download podcasts and YouTube can be used to find videos that relate to a given subject or topic. I believe in the philosophy that you can't knock something until you try it and I think that its worthwhile to see where these pieces of technology could take our students in terms of their learning.