Assignment 1-Technology in Education
There are many ways to define Educational Technology, but if you really think about it, it’s not too complicated to define it. Educational Technology is exactly what it sounds like. Technology used for education, meaning any type of media that will aid the teacher or the students in the classroom. This could be something as simple as a School House Rock movie or something as new and complex as a SMART Board.
In my experience as a teacher’s assistant in a 5th grade classroom, I saw the teacher use many types of technology on a daily basis, not only for the students but also for herself for organizational and communication purposes. She used a SMART Board to lead discussions with the students, write notes, practice math problems, show the class diagrams, etc. She also used a laptop to keep up with attendance and grades and even had worksheets for the class scanned into her computer. This made it a bit easier for her to manage her class because there wasn’t as much paper flying around the room.
All of the students knew how to use the computers that were provided in the classroom. They knew how to access their favorite educational websites for games, look up information on Google (with adult supervision of course), and even how to type up a word document and make a power point with little to no help at all. This shows the immense need for technology in the classroom and how much it helps students. Every time one of the students found something online I saw how excited and proud of themselves they were. I think that using technology in the classroom sort of switches it up a bit, and adds some spice to the normal science lesson. I found that the children stay focused longer on something on a screen than they do when someone is just talking to them, therefore making learning the material somewhat easier and teaching more fun, in my opinion.
There are some people that say that technology is just a distraction to the teaching process and that teachers should stick to the book (literally). There is a lot of things out on the web that young classes don’t need to see that could be easily accessed by accident. Also those teachers who are not educated enough on the specific programs and devices could waste critical class time trying to figure out how to get the program to work. I have also seen computers crash and teachers loose all of their records and lesson plans for the whole semester, so there is a lot of room for error when depending on technology in the classroom.
