Week One Journal One: Educational Technology

After reviewing the many technological developments used in education through the ages, I think that the most significant key developments are computers, document cameras, projectors and interactive whiteboards. I know, I know, I just listed the things that we use the most in the classrooms today. There is a reason we use them though, they are amazing tools! These tools make for an easier classroom. You can save documents from previous lessons and reuse them later. These gadgets help cut down the time the teacher spends creating lessons. The teacher's time is valuable, if it can be used in other ways, it should be.

Looking back on my experience with technology in the classroom as a student, I'd have to say that the overhead projector and Apple computers (starting in 5th grade) were used the most. Both of these tools were very helpful in increasing my learning. I created so many PowerPoints and book reports on those computers.

Later in middle and high school I was introduced to document cameras and projectors, something I use in my own classroom today. These are fantastic because they aren't messy and you can show things from your laptop over the projector as well. Another useful tool that I have recently started learning how to use are Promethean boards. These boards are very interactive. The students are able to use them too! You can use them for all sorts of things the best of which have the students coming up to the front and participating in games and experiments.

Technology can be a good thing and a bad thing. When I started thinking about how technology has increased or decreased my learning I couldn't think of a single way that technology has decreased it at first. Then I took a little bit longer to reflect and realized that there are many ways that technology has decreased my learning. These things however have only decreased my learning because of my attachment to them. Here are a just a few ways that technology decreases my learning:

All of these types of technology can be very distracting from learning. I spend way too much of my time on all of these things. Earlier today, I purposely let my kindle die so that I would stop letting myself get distracted by all of the fun features on it. Facebook, Sims and Pinterest are time consuming. I could watch shows and videos on Netflix, Hulu+ and YouTube all day long. Pandora and Spotify have unexpected audio ads that like to interrupt my thought process, and if I don't choose my channels corrects, the music I listen to can be very distracting by itself. None of these things are necessarily bad things, they are distracting though.

Returning to Pinterest, YouTube, Pandora and Spotify though, these wonderful things can be fantastic tools when used in the right way. Pandora and Spotify allows you to choose the type of music you listen to. I have a couple different stations (depending on my mood) that help me focus much better that silence will. YouTube has a wealth of educational and instructional videos and Pinterest, oh my lovely Pinterest. Pinterest, if you let yourself find them, has a seemingly unlimited supply of lesson plans, and other educational material just waiting for you to find and devour.