Post #1

New technologies, such as computers, are becoming increasingly important to the educational system because they teach students many essential real world skills. A prime example of these "real world" skills would be basic operation of a computer. There are few professions that do not require some basic knowledge of how to operate a computer and familiarizing students with these functions is preparing them for when they enter into the workforce. Also, learning these new technologies teaches students how to retrieve and analyze information in a way that may be more effective to the various learning styles. I agree with the issues raised in the first chapter. An important issue to realize is that not all students will grasp how to work with computers, for some it will because of the divide, but it's crucial to realize students will working at different paces and to recognize those effected by the digital divide. The difficulty was mentioned of having to keep the fast learners engaged, while assisting those who are struggling, and that will be something I have to think more about how to balance. I did like the Fruit Files idea though because it was a lesson in familiarizing students with finding and saving files to the computer and offered a suggestion of how to keep students of every ability engaged in the activity.

Some ideas I have for using a computer in my classroom (although I doubt I'll use all of them) are: Power Point presentations, writing papers, and/or vocabulary games or quizzes. I could use Power Point to lend visual aid to my lectures, but this is highly unlikely as because I even find Power Point presentations to be boring. More likely I would reserve the use of Power Points for if I ever had the students break into groups for a group presentation of a book or literary device we had been learning. I would allow students to use a computer to write some of their essays, although not all. This is because while I see the value in using a computer I wouldn't want them to lose other necessary skills. While the occasional use of a computer would familiarize them with MS Word or something similar, help them correct spelling errors, and save time in re-drafting, I wouldn't want them to become completely reliant on the technology. As the book stated, some older methods work just the same and are more cost effective. I would want them to write some without computers so they could maintain penmanship and time management. I know there are some tasks, such as the SAT, which they will not have these technologies available and I do not want to handicap them in that way. So my classroom would be about balancing old methods and new technologies so students get the benefit of new technologies, but their education does not suffer. The third way I might incorporate new technologies into the classroom would be to find/design a fun game or quiz that would test my students for vocabulary or quiz them on the book we had been reading. That way it's a fun, interactive way to get the information to them that breaks up the monotony of the normal school day.

Something in this chapter that bothered me was discussing how the teacher's role is becoming more of a facilitator or "co-learner." This bothered me because I don't see it that way at all. I do not think my role as the teacher is to present the information and step back to let the students figure it out for themselves. Granted, I won't tell them everything, I do want them to figure out concepts and ideas and answers for themselves, but I feel my role is to guide them to get there, not to play the part of a baby-sitter. I was just wondering if anyone else got that from that portion of the text? To me, being an educator is to teach the students something. It's not necessarily always curriculum, sometimes it's such things as thinking outside the box. I also think the best approach to do that is to be there asking probing questions, guiding the students to reach these conclusions for themselves, not taking a seat and letting students teach themselves. I think technology can help achieve this goal, but as I stated above it's a balance between tried and true and new technology.