No doubt technology is changing the way the student is
thinking. The reactions are more immediate and the answers are come with more
questionings. All this behavioral revolution requires updated adaptations by
the teacher and of her teaching. She should be able to transfer technological
resources into academic content. Or even better, she can use tools, which allow
teaching to flourish in a more efficient way. So I conclude
that technology is unavoidable in today’s world, and classroom.
I found it very interesting article
about learning from our mistakes. All this range of opportunities and tools
that technology brings, must be introduced calmly, with reflections, with
reading, sharing experiences with other teachers and to be clear, what is the
purpose of the educational activity.
In my last class, Advanced Trends in Education, we learned
a lot about trends that involves technology. So this made me reflect on
technology as trend. I think technology cannot be considered as trend anymore,
but WHAT we are doing with the technology is the trend.
According to Willinghan,
it makes no sense to say that students are interested in mobile devices,
because their true interest in the device will depend on what they will do with
the phone. It seems so obvious, but I confess that I had never stopped to think
about this aspect of technology. It is an interesting point of view. So, can we
apply this theory to all other technological devices such as iPads, tablets,
and notebooks?
iPad, smartphones, GPS, wikis,
blogs, it's a lot. And today I got another "bunch “of
technologies. I've never heard about the Geo Cashing(New Literacy?? I
still didn't figure out what it means!). It is very interesting. I think it is
going to help a lot the students with maps and, of course the GPS.
I read a whole a whole article
about exploring of the use of the iPad for literacy (why not Tablet instead
iPad?? makes me feel reading an ad). The author related the positive
results of experiment of use iPads in the fourth grade. The
results really impressed me. I discussed with group about if iPad should be incorporate into
the curriculum. Some participants said no, some said depends of the school. I
think should be incorporated and the school should planning ahead how
to use the iPad. It doesn't mean that the use of the iPad it will
be restrict to activities specified on the curriculum. But can
be a great guide for teachers who are trying/using the iPads for
the first times.
Hi Silva, the information can easily be an overload and an overwhelming experience. There are so many things bombarding us and the interactions with the technology is making our attention spans shorter and shorter. I listened to a podcast that talked about how we're reading much shorter texts and the attention that we can give to a text is much shorter now. Websites cut their articles into many smaller parts to increase webpage views. Even though they allow the article to be read on one page, you still need to click on the original page first. I don't use Twitter but now that tool looks to shorten everything down into abbreviations and hashtags. I think the new ways of writing and reading is just a sign of the times and a product of the technological innovations. How can we help students deal with the new ways of writing and reading? I think we have to learn them ourselves before we can teach it to our students. In many ways, our students are more technologically literate than we are. I can learn a lot from them. I like your attitude and openness to technology and all the planning and learning that is required to make it useful in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteHi Silvia,
ReplyDeleteI’ve tried to explain geocaching on my post but I don’t know if I did it any better in writing than I did in class! IPads are a tool that will work in many classrooms if they are used appropriately and at the correct times. “Old” literacies like the 3 R’s are still important and form the foundation of a lot of these new literacies. Mind you, how long will it be before our computers speak to us instead of us having to read and put what we have just said into text to send to someone else? Siri has already started doing our websearches for us!
I think we may as well embrace technology as we will certainly drown in the technology tsunami that is engulfing school. We need to prepare our students for their lives after school and teach them how to be safe in both the physical and the virtual world. If we can increase students willingness and propensity to learn by using the technology they crave that is a big part of our job done for us!!!
Thank you for your post.
Paul
Silvia, I liked this comment you made, "All this range of opportunities and tools that technology brings, must be introduced calmly, with reflections, with reading, sharing experiences with other teachers and to be clear, what is the purpose of the educational activity." I think that is an important stance because as I have mentioned in other posts, our students are born into this digital world and are digital natives, while many of us are straddling two worlds and are digital immigrants. This may be why we feel so overwhelmed by the onslaught of technology, the rapid change, and the potential loss of traditional skills. But, we have to remember that our students do not have a reference for the pre-tech world that we have therefore the technology becomes a way of life like television and electricity had for us. Thanks for the post. It looks like you touched on something that other students responded to as well. :) Jim
ReplyDelete