I have watched a video like this before. I understand that technology is the future. Not just for teaching and school, but for everyone across the world. I think that the more we implement technology into the school system, the more I feel we will be moving schools towards just teaching how to utilize technology in their own lives, that we will forget why children are actually at school. School is to help children expand their minds intellectually, if students are able to look everything up on a computer, than there is no mental action actually taking place. It is much easier for me to pull up a calculator and find what 123x231 is, than by using pen and paper, but where does that get us, is the student actually learning that 123x231 is 28413, or that 123 groups that have 231 materials in them equal 28,413 materials. By associating students with material they should be learning, they gain intellectual know how to help them think faster through items. By giving students answers they can just look up only allows them to think which resource to use!
I believe technology is important to everyone and everything in the world, I think that we should utilize technology within the classroom, but not allow students to have everything be learned on a computer. Children must learn to utilize their brain functioning so that it builds upon one other, technology just provides students with the easy way out, in my opinion on this!
Some of the statistics in this video surprised (and terrified!) me. I definitely got a kick out of the Wikipedia one. I've been arguing with another faculty member for over a year now because she doesn't allow any web-based sources when her students do research. Everything has to be paper-based - and I haven't been able to convince her that often web-based resources are more up-to-date than paper-based ones!
ReplyDeleteI sure appreciate your enthusiasm for using technology in the classroom. I don't believe in using technology just for the sake of using it. It's not the answer to everything, but it's a powerful tool in the hands of good teachers.