As noted in my blog, I am fully convinced that technology in the classroom has many benefits, both for teachers and students. As teachers, technology can help us be more organized, and overall make our lives easier. For students, technology can be highly motivating, and with all of the assistive technologies I've learned about, I've discovered technology can even level the playing field between students with disabilities and those without. Technology is also necessary to know in today's world, and is therefore a necessary component in today's classrooms.
Technology for Teachers
There are so many technologies available to make teacher's lives easier. The computer itself makes recording grades, attendance, notes, and anything else that needs to be recorded so much easier to organize. There are programs that will create rubrics, there are already made lesson plans, worksheets, and activities available all over the Internet, and there are places that help you create your own lesson plans, worksheets, and activities. And these are just a few resources available to teachers! For these reasons, I plan on using technology in my role as a teacher.
Technology for Students
Students need motivation to learn, and many students are motivated by technology. Technology can make learning fun, whether that by learning multiplication tables through a computer game, learning geography through Google Earth, or learning history by playing a video game. When students are having fun learning, teachers are having fun teaching. These types of interactive learning makes the classroom environment more productive for everyone.
Not only can technology make learning fun, it can also make learning more accessible. I learned about so many assistive technologies this quarter, and I think it is safe to say there is an assistive technology available for almost any challenge: from blindness to difficulties with fine motor skills, from hearing impairments to speaking English as a second language, and everything in between and beyond. Years ago in many of these situations we might have put these students in a “special ed.” classroom, when there is absolutely nothing impairing their ability to learn. Now, with the right assistive technologies, these students can continue learning in the least restrictive environment at the same level as their peers. Not only does this help the differently abled students, it also helps the “non-disabled” students as well, showing them that just because someone has different abilities than they do, that is no reason to treat them differently.
Technology Today
We all know that we are surrounded by technology. You are reading this on a website, so that means you are using a piece of technology to do so, whether it be on a computer or on your cell phone. At work I, as well as many other people, work on several different computer programs daily. Without the skills to know how to operate computers, I would not be able to do my job. If we deny students the ability to use technology in the classroom, we may very well be limiting them in the world. If school is where students learn what is important in life, and we limit their interaction with technology, they may come to understand, wrongly, that technology is not important. We cannot deny that our world is becoming more and more dependent on technology, we therefore cannot deny the importance of it to our students. Let's prepare them for the technology in the world, let's let them read books on the computer, let's make learning fun and interesting, let's teach students how to use technology responsibly so that they will be prepared for a life in today's technologically advanced world.
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