My Beliefs

I have always been a strong proponent of technology in the classroom. I think as a student I craved it because it was the new up and coming thing that was being introduced in our lives. I'm not that old but I have seen computers go from being a black and green screen to the new ipads! That's a crazy jump in technology in just a few (relatively) short years! I remember when the internet was starting to be integrated into the schools and how we were allotted 10 minutes in our typing class at the end of the day to get on and see what there was out there! AOL still offered trial packages where you could get 10 FREE hours on the internet! Nowadays some people spend 10 hours trying to locate the sword of (insert weird world of warcraft term here) with people from all over the world. My point is that I have seen technology grow over the years and still get excited by the newest and greatest thing!

Ideally we would all be learning the same things all across the country but that's not the case. In the Millenial Generation video you can see that most of these kids have access to quite a lot of technology. Whether their parents give them cell phones or laptops etc...or whether their computer lab is full of brand new macs. Such is not the case in every class in the US. We'd like it to be but it isn't. So it all really depends on the school I work for. It would be great to have access to projectors and smart boards and things like that but if it isn't provided...that's where the problem comes. How do you prepare kids to function in a world that operates daily with technology without giving them the tools they need to learn it. I think the teacher has a great deal of responsibility. They should make every effort to either try to get a hold of supplies or invest in a classroom projector...etc that they can use.

Whether you like it or not, technology and computers is the future of this country. Every job will involve using it someway or another. I think the days are long gone where students learn typing just so they can make papers look nice for their teachers or to learn to send memos to their future bosses. My 4th grade class I student taught in were learning everything from power points to excel in their computer classes because those are the skills that are needed in the world today. So integrating technology in the classroom isn't really to show them what cool things are out there...it's because they HAVE to know it to function in our world. I hope as a teacher I can remember that and prepare them for this technologically savvy world we live in.