Chapters 1+2 blog

Teachers have great incentive to utilize technology in their work. Technology allows teachers to better handle their daily administrative tasks, allowing them to maintain accountability and readiness for their lessons and curriculum. Teachers can utilize technology to create presentations through programs like powerpoint to optimize and streamline the teaching process. Teachers can also use technological tools to communicate with one another and with teachers across the country. This allows teachers to use the best collaborative ideas of their peers and other teachers across the country. Perhaps most importantly, technology allows a certain degree of individualistic customization based on each students unique levels and needs. 

For students, technology has an important role in their classroom experience. For students, technology can facilitate learning in myriad ways. Technology can be used to help students reinforce learning by allowing them to gain extra practice according to each students needs. In this way, technology can be a good medium for homework, a tool which is most importantly employed as a method of educational reinforcement. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, technology can be customized and individualized allowing for a good degree of optimization for students of diverse learning abilities and backgrounds. Technology also allows students to further develop critical thinking skills by giving them an opportunity to engage the material rather than simply observing it. Students are also given the chance to engage their creative sides through technology as well as utilize it to communicate and collaborate with one another. Finally technology can be used as a way to assess students individual ability levels and understanding of material. 

The International Society for Technology in Education has developed a system of standards for technology in the classroom. I personally find many of the standards to be reasonable for all teachers. I believe that the facilitation and inspiration of student learning and creativity is essential, as it develops an intrinsic desire to learn. Such an intrinsic desire will foster a lifetime of learning success for students. For this reason, I believe that the promotion support, and modeling of creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness is the most important standard for teaching students. The creation of digital age learning experiences and assessments is also essential as it allows students to be assessed in more relevant ways, however the standards of assessment through technology are still outside of my skill set as of now, specifically the standard that refers to the actual creation of technology-enriched tools and assessments. While I have experience taking such assessments, I still have a way to go in terms of creation and development of such environments. 

I completely agree with the concept of the “digital native” for todays youth. I was born into a society in which technology is pervasive. Throughout my life every aspect of communication, life, and education has utilized a certain degree of technology. I have often found that many of my teachers, who are themselves digital immigrants, have struggled to fully grasp technologies that digital natives find to be very simplistic in nature. Things such as getting volume to turn on in the classroom or pausing a youtube video so that it doesn’t run in the background of a powerpoint present a great deal of difficulty for teachers, when students find such things to be relatively similar. Besides such minor inconveniences I would not say that there has been a great impact on my learning experience beyond that of possible lack of meeting technological educational potential. I believe that as technology becomes more sophisticated I will learn it more slowly compared to my future students, but that the technological mindset is within me and will allow me to innovate and adapt in the new technological classroom.