Teaching and Everyday Technology

I think that technology is a huge asset to teaching and that most technologies should be considered to be used in class. Even with students using a wide variety of technologies at a much younger age, some of those technologies should not be used in the classroom such as cell phones, social networking sites, and sites like Twitter. In my opinion, cell phones would pose too much of a distraction for students with the ability for them to text anyone during class and allow them to put their attention there instead of what is being taught. Social networking sites and sites like Twitter would pose a similar distraction to students unless there was a group created on one of the sites that required students to either view or post materials on. Some video games that are specifically designed for teaching basic skills could be useful at a younger ages, but generally at a certain point the games become boring and more of an annoyance to students than helpful. In class, sites such as Youtube would be a huge distraction for students allowing them to view a wide variety of material that does not have to do with the class and could be inappropriate for school. Youtube could be very useful outside of class though for classes like sign language where students could post speaches or even work in a drama class where a student could post a skit to share with the rest of the class.