Technology paper

Two Page Paper

 

As an educator in today’s teaching world, it is becoming my role to be a leader in teaching technology to my students.  It is also the role of the school to be implementations’ of this vision and to make sure students of today are prepared for the future and technology is the key component that is needed.  Robyler and Doering stated that “technology is by definition intended to be part our path to a better life, rather than an obstacle in its way” (p. HVii).  With this thought in mind, it is pretty understandable what the a teacher must do to keep herself as well as her students current with the curriculum push happen today.  By implementing technology in to the curriculum, teachers are following the NETS standards that has made its way into all school grade level curriculums.  Furthermore, by teaching technology, teachers are also fulfilling the vision of creating a worldwide social network, and a global community that learns and grows together (Royber & Doeyer, 2010).

            When students are using technology in the classroom they are actively involved and become conductors of their own education gains.  Creating this environment can be difficult if teachers do not keep up with the current practices that are out there in teaching these tools that are considered effect motivators for building self-esteem for the student as well as helping to promote an environment of empowerment for the students.  Not only does implementing technology increase the students’ self-esteem, it also increase the child’s higher level thinking skills that allows for the students to have more exploration time and hands on perspectives to the learning.  With this change in role for the teachers, it becomes a base for students to become facilitators of executive type goals and decision mkers.    

            Many educators today find it difficult to always implement this somewhat new way of teaching and are also having a difficult time with throwing away the worksheet lesson, but as Rubenstein suggested in her article, “to use technology only when it enhance your content, not the other way around, otherwise technology taught for technology sake is not effective”, (Robenstein 2010)    This is very important when thinking about implementing technology.  One would not want to teach a technology application or device that does not apply to the curriculum or topic as it would really have no interest to the subject and would have no educational need.  Implementing technology needs to be linked to a purpose as well as beneficial to the level of the learner.

            There are many types of technology applications that can be taught to various levels of learners and the levels of the application itself can be grouped by age and understanding levels.  Interactive white boards, clickers, podcast, voice threads and slide share can be creative ways for learners in the elementary years to create research papers.  Blogs and wiki’s are great social media sources that can allow the children to communicate with others on their learning, and most students seemed to enjoy this type of learning.