1.
The computer with access to e-mail and social
networking.
2.
The cell phone and by extension the smartphone.
3.
The radio.
I think Olivia’s Story typifies
the ease, proficiency, and adaptability of kids today with their use of
technology. Her lack of ownership of a computer did not preclude her from her
ability to navigate through the web and create websites. Her phone and iPod
also became extensions of her personality and are indispensable and inseparable
additions to her life. So it is with most students and younger adults today. Growing
up in the age before computers and mobile devices, I first found them not necessary
for my daily work life, but as business and the military moved to use these
technologies, I was “forced” to adapt to them. Today I find my use of the
computer and smartphone to be regular and important aspects of my daily
routine. The availability of the internet for use in research and social media
communication whether by smartphone or computer are now second nature. E-mail delivers
almost all my important professional and personal correspondence.
Our students are probably more immersed
in the technology than their constant and continual use reveal. Almost all
their social and academic activities are technology based or driven. I think we
as educators, need to develop learning strategies that build upon our students familiarity
and dependence with the current technologies and foster inquiry into emerging methods
and technologies that build upon that base. As a social studies teacher, the
ease at which I can find and provide primary source documents and media to use
in my lessons, and my students familiarity in researching and finding their own
information will increase their content exposure. I know for my own research and
learning purposes the ease in which I can access virtually any topic through
the internet via the computer or smartphone has been an unbelievable resource. Access
to the vast number of collections that are now digitized used to take hours and
days of travel and often great expense, are now literally at our
fingertips. Our students have grown up with this technology, and it appears second
nature to them.
All the benefit does not come
without its shortcomings. The sheer volume of information out there often makes
it hard to focus on the important topics, and the validity of the information
itself is often suspect due to the ease in which anyone can publish a website.
Another is the amount of time we all spend on frivolity that could better be
spent focused on required topics. I myself am guilty of checking in on Facebook
or any number of internet forums for interesting threads, or checking e-mail
for new info, when I should be focusing on a lesson or something equally
important. I think we all need to look to ways to make our technology based
times more qualitative and less time consuming, and I think that as educators,
we’ll need to find ways to direct that in our classrooms.
Well stated Scott. I completely agree with everything you said. Technology plays a major role in everyone's lives, now more than ever, and we as future teachers need to find the correct ways to integrate technology into our classrooms. Technology can be very useful to our students in completing assignments, presentations and projects, but as teachers, we need to teach them the most effective ways to use technology so that they find valid information/sources. Although the internet is a luxury and we can find anything we want at our fingertips their is a lot of suspect information out there that can easily be viewed by our students. The most important thing I think we can do as educators when using technology is to teach our students how to research something and how to distinguish good sources from bad ones. Would you agree?
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