Marsha Marsha Marsha..I mean technology, technology, technology… There’s no I think or I feel with this one, technology is now, and is the future. The applications we have learned in Alec’s class will be incredibly useful in many aspects of my future classroom.
But let’s be real. I won’t be using them all. I know me, and me will pick a few that I like, and a few that I was familiar with before this class and use them for my students. Skype to get in touch with classrooms around the world; yes! I have teacher friends in Ireland and would love to be technology penpals (they were the ones who first introduced Skype to me as well). WordPress and blogging? yes! What a great way to show parents what their kids are up to. Garage band? yes, I love music and I love having fun and I hope my students will get to experience that using things like Garageband as well.
For example, I will love using technology to introduce units. It’s such a good way to catch the students attention, because really, they don’t know that they are thinking about what’s going on. They are firstly being entertained and the learning takes place in a fun environment. For example, if I was to introduce the last day of school to my students I would open up with….
sorry you will have to watch it on Youtube!!
exactly at 16 seconds when Damon Albarn goes “WOOOOO HOOOOOO”. Who isn’t excited about summer holidays? I was actually going to save this video post for my last blog entry, but it was also applicable here.
There are a plethora of articles discussing the uses of technology and its importance in today’s classrooms. Take for example “Using the Technology of Today in the Classrooms of Today” http://education.mit.edu/papers/GamesSimsSocNets_EdArcade.pdf I wonder what this article is about?? Haha, well it talks about the relationship between technology and teachers…in a nutshell. The authors clearly feel technology’s importance in all areas of education: social media, collaboration, project based learning, real life examples/situations. Really paralleling technology with the future needs of the students. I feel like we need balance. Please incorporate technology into your classrooms. It’s fun and creative and opens a lot of doors and perhaps “windows”..badda bing! But let’s remember to teach our kids how to read and write using tangible paper and pencils as well…
Dead horse to not be beaten…this is all I am going to say about it!
Janice H 
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