Great video! I was really struck by how deeply integrated our children are with technology. For kids who grew up watching movies and playing games on the computer, it is definitely understandable that they would have trouble listening to a teacher talk.
I think it is fantastic that giving technology to our students gives them more control over their learning. Children should be expected to take responsibility for their education and their goals. The industrial era is over and we do not need students who learn a procedure from a superior, then repeat it. We need students who are self motivated and capable of finding the information they need to solve the problem they are interested in.
We are giving more control to students but we also need to make sure that students use their time productively. Children have difficulty with self control so we should attempt to remove distractions during class time. Educators should collaborate with computer and cell phone manufacturers to create software that gives teachers the ability to enable/disable features or content.
Designing lessons using technology can be more time consuming but if we create a system to share our lessons and are able to use other's lessons, we will reduce the amount of time we have to spend planning. We won't need to gather resources to make photocopies of because the resources will all be online and accessible.
Avoiding technology integration is a disservice to our children. In a few years most children will have iPhone-type phones that students and teachers will be able to deliver content to. We need to rethink our no cell phones or iPods policies and incorporate students technology. By utilizing the technology students bring to school, we can decrease the amount of additional funding schools spend on technology.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I agree that allowing students and teachers to communicate via their cell phones is a great way to implement technology into a lesson. Children are already spending a great deal of time communicating with their friends and family via text messaging, so they are already really familiar with the technology. Since most parents send their children to schools with cell phones anyway, it would cut down on the additional funding.
Of course I don't think that too much time should be spent via text messaging in a classroom, but I definitely can see the benefit. Teachers may want to hold a two to three question quiz through a text message that would require a one or two sentence answer. Of course, since I would like to be a middle school language arts teacher, I would require that all answers are in complete, grammatically correct sentences. I think all teachers should require the same, as it would continue to enforce good writing skills.
Post a Comment