Technology+Intergration

The video, entitled //Tech-Fueled Differentiated Instruction Engages Elementary School Students //[] gives a wonderful example of technology and classroom marriage. The students in the elementary school use a wide variety of technologies to further their education, and according to the teachers the technology it’s working excellently. The students are engaged in their lessons and are actively participating in classroom discussions. From what the video shows, students thoroughly enjoy being part of the action when it comes to classroom explanations, and enjoy a learning environment that keeps them busy. From personal experience when children learn with distractions and things they can manipulate and explore for themselves the learning rate is much higher than that of a typical lecture and book based classroom. This video represents everything a teacher-student relationship should be like, where each student can get equal assistance and time to work problems through, and make mistakes and learn from them by correcting and explaining themselves and their thinking, then being peer-evaluated. Technology allows this to happen, especially represented in this video. This video taught myself that there are a lot more ways to readily use technology then the typical create a drawing and explain it, look at numbers explain them, and look at PowerPoint and fill out a worksheet, scenarios.

It is obvious that a teacher who traditionally teaches younger children needs to be aware of technology, especially how to use it in their lectures. If a teacher, particularly in the secondary teaching field does not pay attention to technology, he or she will be very much affected in their classroom, and lose student attention fairly quickly. Teenagers are very particular with technology, because of the interest shift that occurs in the precarious years of teen hood. Music, communication, movies, and videos become their main focus and entertainment means, as such a teacher unprepared to deal with these circumstances will face not only an uphill battle, but more of a mountain climbing war. And since it is very difficult to scale the logic of a teenager, the teacher must somehow incorporate technology teaching materials in the classroom. For myself, as I will be an English teacher of teenagers, it is important to know how to avoid technology distractions (such as cell phone usage in the room etc.) and use technology as an advantage. So in essence I need to know the how to of everything in the technology world. As for class lectures? I know I will be using PowerPoint very often, as a means to teach the course, and any sort of word document for homework class assignments, so that I may indeed read papers without worrying about handwriting, (although there will still be handwritten examinations in my classroom).

Also I came across a rather interesting article for another class the other day, about how to use technology and English together. To get my students to write and understand WHY writing is important, the use of digital media, such as drawing tools and recordings, to explain stories that then will be written down on paper, helps aid in the satisfaction of students. I know from tutoring younger family members, friends, and other youths, that if they are interested in something they will much more enjoy the subject. If I can make sure that the student has fun writing an essay, the student is more capable of understanding the concepts, correcting themselves, and learning something about the writing process. Allowing the student to be creative as well, makes sure the content stays in the student’s storage file folder in their minds in one way or another. So using digital media such as paint, movie editor, photo workshop, Power Point, and so on make sure the student learns life skills incorporating English into the mix of their list of likes. Unfortunately for my students though, I will still require that the students read actual books, NOT computerized Cliffs Notes.