Reflecting on Technology in the Classroom

Technology is everywhere in our society, from cell phones to internet cafes to I-Pods. Our future students have been immersed in technology from birth, as evidenced by the quickest growing demographic of people using the internet (ages 2-5). As teachers, it is our job to prepare our students for this ever changing world and help them gain the skills to excel in a society we do not even know yet. One way to do this is to reach students with a tool they know well: Technology.

In my future classroom, I hope to have the resources to use technology in many different ways. I can imagine myself using a blog to host a classroom website that would be a vehicle for parents, students, and I to communicate and stay informed about the class. I also would like to use Podcasts or videos to reach students who were absent or just need a reminder about what was covered in class that day. An interactive SmartBoard would also be a great addition to any lesson, and break down the four walls that surround the room to let the world enter. Technology can be used past lesson planning and organization, though. It can also be used as a way for students to showcase their knowledge or build new pathways of information. For example, if a high school history class was researching the biographies of famous Renaissance painters, they could showcase their knowledge on a social networking site. By creating a MySpace or Facebook page for their painter, they could take on the role more fully and connect to the other famous “painters” (their classmates) via the website. This would allow students to demonstrate their knowledge and visually see, in a way that was familiar to them, how the Renaissance painters influenced each other. As a student might say, “Look at that… Michelangelo and Leonardo are in each other’s top 8!”

For students in our future classrooms, technology is not the “wave of the future,” it is everyday life. We must prepare them to be strong thinkers, problem solvers, and inventors. Technology is one more way to do this. With thoughtful planning and reflecting, we as teachers must harness this tool and make it accessible to all of our future students.