Reflection #2: Thoughts About the Usage of Technology in Classrooms

 

The main point that I gathered from the reading is that educators should teach through technology instead of with it. By this I mean that they should use the technology that is available to them as a vessel through which they can transfer the information to their students. Technology should be used to reinforce knowledge and to better understand it than to learn it for the first and only time. I read that making tables and slideshows and various other technologies helps the material become more firmly planted in your mind. It helps you learn it better, which is the whole point.

 

This is a sensible concept and doesn’t surprise me in the least, however I do think that it is an easy rut to fall into as a teacher and honestly isn’t a realization that I had given a name to. This article has certainly changed my views about education, simply because I had never realized how often this faux-pa was made and now that it has been pointed out, I can look back and see that the classes that I learned the most in were the ones that integrated the use of technology in a way that made us take what we were learning and apply it instead of getting the information directly from the technology and then not being required to do anything with it.

  

Reflection #1 for EDIT 2000

I can recall when I was in Intermediate school, the teachers used to teach using projectors with light bulbs and slips of

plastic that had the material printed on it. Also, when movies were shown, they were on VHS tapes.

Once I entered middle school, projectors that connected to a computer began being put to use, but they were on four-wheeled carts and annoying to use. Sometime in middle school, the PCs that were in the computer labs were replaced with Macs. In eighth grade or so, projectors began to be mounted directly to the ceiling and Smart Boards became popular, although  were finicky and incredibly expensive. By this time, DVD’s were more common than VHS tapes.

By the time I reached high school, Smart Boards were common place, and even classes that didn’t have them at least had ceiling projectors. Bulky and slow PCs were outdated  replaced with slimmer versions. The Internet itself had become faster and more expansive, providing us with even more resources to use for our research papers and other projects.

How do you learn something? We learn things by receiving information in a clear and meaningful way that we can process and store for retrieval and usage later. Who helps

you learn things? Learning is most frequently assisted by teachers/professors but also by friends which can form study groups and occasionally help put things a different way that is easier to understand and remember. In the past years, what has changed in your learning? My learning style has changed as I have gradually gotten older and more responsible. However, the material learned has also become much more complex and intricate, which required more effort and study time to be devoted to learning it. How does technology change the way you learn? Technology changes the way I learn by quickly providing easily accessible information (smartphones, computers, tablets), allowing me to compile it and present it in new, interesting, and fun ways (PowerPoint, Word, Pages, Keynote, Excel, Numbers), as well as take note of things that I need to remember

(Notes, Calendar, Alarms, Reminder). What’s the role of technology in your learning? Currently, in college, technology has a very prominent role in my learning. I use my phone to get me to and from classes and to keep track of my schedule. I use my computer to type papers, do research, send emails, get and do assignments, and I use printers frequently. My teachers use projectors, laser pointers, computers, online books, and sometimes magnifying projector things in my science classes.