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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

IT's Elementary!

The first chapter of this book brought up some good points that I had not thought about before.  The chapter talked about how the teacher had to really know what he/she was talking about.  The book said that some students knew more about technology than the teacher.  I realize that this is true.  Many students know a great deal about technology.  Teachers need to become more up to date on the technology so that they can keep up with their students.  The teacher knows the students and how each student learns best.  Therefore the teacher needs to teach his/her own students about the technology.  A tech assistant will not know each student's personal needs.  This could cause many problems.  It would take a great deal of money and planning to try to train all the teachers in the latest technology, when many schools do not have the funds to get things such as textbooks.  We need to find more efficient ways of training teachers.  I think that making it a requirement in college to take a technology class would be a tremendous help.  The possibilities are endless when it comes to technology, and it is very important that everyone is up to date.

The article also talked about the fact that students that had technology at their fingertips had better grades in school.  I would like to look more into this statement because there are many things that factor into this statement.  The schools that have the latest technology are schools with more money which means the students probably come from families that have more money, and have had more of an education.  I would like to look at a study that shows students of all economic levels and backgrounds and how they deal with technology and how it effects their grades.  I am excited to keep reading this book.  It will be interesting to see the suggestions it has for how to incorporate technology into activities everyday.

2 comments:

jbaffes said...

I think that you brought up a very good point that I did not think about before. You pointed out that this chapter left out schools that can't always afford the latest in technology. It got me thinking about how this chapter emphasizes the importance of incorporating technology into the classroom and how beneficial it can be for a child's learning experience. But what about those schools who can't afford the latest in technology let alone send their teachers to learn about it. I thought that was a very interesting point and I would also like to look at a study done that includes schools from all sorts backgrounds.

Carlie said...

I also think that Kris brought up some excellent points about the varrying availability of technology in different schools. Since, the book discussed how students' performance is significantly better when technology is frequently used, I also would have enjoyed seeing more detailed studies proving that statement. As you said, there are so many other factors that can contribute to students' overall success and I think that in this chapter Lenski's study was vaguely portrayed. I'm hoping that in future chapters we will get more details about various studies done and more suggestions on how we can incorporate technology into the classroom.