Hello future educators! I hope, like me, you are having fun learning about the strategies, tips, and tricks to good and effective teaching.
I'd like to take time to write to you about the influx of technologies you are seeing come to our classrooms. Like my other blogs, such as the one where I am talking about our generations technological limbo in the classroom, this one will be talking about technology, but more so from the defensive and/or reactionary side to those educators that may be blogging in nothing but praise for the incoming technologies. I think it goes without saying that technology is a invaluable resource to the students of todays world; what resources that were once either at your library or unattainable and now able to be accessed with the click of a few keys and a left-click on a mouse. This is great. However, what else is there that is not being told to us? How about how to correctly check if your research is credible? These are among the questions I hope to ask and attempt to answer today.
Stephanie Norman is a freelancing tutor and educator who proceeded to write a blog regarding technological benefits. She outlines in 7 points why we need tech. Among her points, there are some that I agree with. For instance, technology is good to the environment because it cuts down on the amount of paper we now need in classrooms. Technology introduces eTextbooks and other means of accessing information. However, this benefit also conflicts with cognitive abilities to comprehend knowledge. To elaborate, studies has proven that students are able to better retain and recall information better if they are able to write it down, rather than typing it on a computer. Consider as well that not every student will have the same success with this learning style from the beginning. How will we accommodate them? How we will accommodate those with learning disabilities? I believe that even if this is the more eco-friendly approach, we must be considerate to our learners. Go green as much as possible, but do not jeopardize our learner's success.
Another benefit Stephanie claims is that students will be more engaging in the classroom because they enjoy technology. While I think this point makes a lot of sense and agree with her claim that you can create a highly interactive classroom, what is to stop students from misusing technology? She notes that students, indeed, will use tech normally to check social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and such. As a college student, I can't begin to tell you how many instances I see where students have a MacBook in front of them with a social media outlet loaded over Canvas or class documents. My question becomes how to mediate this misuse as one teacher? In my opinion, we simply can't. If your student: teacher ratio is 30+:1 and you are trying to lead a lecture, I would't imagine you can successfully cover all your materials if you're too focused on checking everyone's screens.
To the future educators, I strongly encourage you to think about these questions as you are deciding how you will incorporate technology. Not everything is as black and white as it should, or may seem. Technology is not a replacement for the teacher in any way possible. If you are able to teach effectively without technology, use it as a learning assistant, but do not expect your students to find success if you don't properly understand when it is appropriate to use it, even with implied benefits that come with technology.
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