Philosophy

As technology continues to develop and improve it begins to invade more and more of our lives. We wake up to cell phone alarms, check e-mail and the weather in the morning on our tablets, then hop into our cars and listen to satellite radio on the way to school at the command of our voices. That’s all in the first two hours of the day. The rest of our day at work and school is just as jam packed with technology as our morning, if not more. As technology begins to touch every part of everything that we do, it becomes necessary to determine where we stand about its use in our lives and as teachers, in our classrooms. There is a lot of wisdom to the proverb, “All things in moderation.” I think that it holds true for technology too. With all the cool things that are being developed it is all too easy to get caught up in the novelty of technology and start planning your instruction around using the newest greatest thing, disregarding the actual effectiveness or relevance of that technology. This is not the way things should be. Instruction should be planned according to what is best for students and if technology can be integrated to make the lesson more effective than by all means it should be integrated. Thus technology is a support to learning not the sole teaching tool. If there is not a technology that fits the lesson it is asinine and irresponsible to modify instruction and lose some of its integrity in order to integrate a vaguely related technology. I have been in classrooms before where this has happened, most often in my own high school. I can say from personal experience that it does not help a student at all to have to use a brand new program that is very similar to an old one to complete a project, that an old program could have been more than sufficient to complete. Again technology in assessment of learning must be used responsibly, truly considering if it provides a better way than the old method or only has draw because it is new and shiny. There are cases when an assessment on an iPad may truly be better than a pencil and paper assessment. If a student has problems focusing, the iPad might hold their attention better, if assessment is verbal and they cannot speak, the iPad provides many speech tools. There are definitely times when technology is the clear winner but it ought not to be blindly used for every situation. Different technologies have different strengths and those should be determined in deciding if/which technology is appropriate in a given situation. iPads: have a wealth of capabilities. They are small mobile powerhouses. The thousands of apps in the app store make them able to do anything a programmer can imagine. This makes them translators, planners, stress relievers, books, the internet, learning games and numerous other things. They are great tools for students with disabilities as they can supplement some senses (like the app for people who are color bling that uses the camera to translate colors to words) and are useful to English language learners as they provide many translation tools. iPads are not always practical because they are expensive, fragile, and if not controlled well can be a huge distraction. There is also the problem of whether or not we allow students to take them home and how we keep students accountable or their care. SmartBoards: are a pretty convenient tool. They are a great for teachers to use to streamline their lesson and make them seamless. They provide for more opportunity than conventional whiteboards for students to interact with the content of the lesson. This is more engaging for students who do well learning with hands on, interactive types of activities. Smartboards are disadvantageous because they can be pretty glitchy. I have noticed lots of technical problems with smartboards, both ones that I am using and ones that my teachers or professors are using. Any hiccup in a lesson is opportunity for behavior issues to arise so the technical difficulties with smartboards can cause a pretty big problem sometimes. Videos: Videos are a great tool for use in the classroom. They are a perfect accommodation for students who cannot read or don’t speak English. Videos are good for these students because they provide enough other visual clues that students can decipher what is going on even if they do not have full command of all senses. I think that the biggest problem with videos for learning is that students might not pay full attention to them and they do not provide much of a way for students to interact with their learning. I will use technology in my classroom with as much discernment as I can. I love the concept of something helping me be a more effective teacher but I will never let technology take the place of instruction. I will thoughtfully consider each piece of technology, weighing its pros and cons before I bring it to my students. I am excited about the prospect of using technology for students who do not speak English fluently and for students who have disabilities. All of these things of course, if the district that I work in has enough money to supply technology.