The Flickering Mind, NETS-S standards, and Tech Tonic chapters all have valid points on the topic of technology in education. Oppenheimer said that technology is not going to fix our students problems, NETS-S standards are what we all strive for, and Tech Tonic's description tells us children come first. But when it comes to reality in the classroom, all three are important. It is our job as the teacher to find a balance between all three and make it a priority for us to know our students as a whole.
As a teacher who is currently in the classroom and who uses technology, the most important thing I do is to make sure my students know the concept well before using technology with that concept. For example, my 7th grade students created a list of foods they wanted to know in Spanish. After creating a list of words they looked them up in the dictionary for the Spanish meaning. Then as a class we went over the list of words in English and Spanish throughout several activities. Once they all had the words down, I had them then choose ten words that they wanted to illustrate. So instead of just using paper and markers, I had them use the computer to do so. They opened a Pages document to type the Spanish words and had to find images on the Internet to match the food item.
Overall I find that technology in the classroom is going to remain a challenge to find the balance of when, what, how, and why to use it. We just have to make the best to enhance our students learning experience.
I agree with you that when it comes to use of technology in the real classroom all three of this reading point out important aspects. When we implement technology in the classroom it is very important to know our students and to make sure that they know the concept that we are teaching them. In my school the students have unlimited access to computers in the classrooms and I see that sometimes technology is over used. The students spend their time on research and computer project for which they are not ready. I also agree that is a challenge to find when, what, how, and why to use it.
ReplyDeleteI wholeheartedly agree with you on the primacy of mastering concepts, and the importance of mastering the concepts before trying to put them into a media production.
ReplyDeleteThere are also ways to use technology to help build the concepts -- I am thinking in particular of tools like Scratch and eToys, where students make things and need to solve problems in the course of making the things ("constructionism"). Not sure to what extent this is applicable to the Spanish classroom.
It sounds like the use of the computer to finalize the project is a good carrot for the students when working on a project.
jd