Technology in Education

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Sometimes it feels overwhelming because I feel like I owe it to my students to stay on top of the latest technologies. I used to teach mainly word processing, spreadsheets, and database but it is time to move on from these applications. I think students should know how to use these because they do offer a lot of benefits for student learning. I just think that my main job in my classrooms for preservice teachers is to first, motivate them to want to use the technology-to see the exciting things technology can do. Second, I want them to have good reasons for using technology-If there are no good reasons for using technology in the classroom, then teachers shouldn’t use it. Third, I want my students to have a large repertoire of technology skills that they can put to use when they become teachers. So this means that I need to keep learning and stay on top of new technologies.

I never am satisfied with teaching a course the same way any semester so this means, I want to keep changing. This is not a bad thing since technology is always changing. If I get stuck in a rut teaching the same things every semester, I am cheating myself from learning and I am cheating my students from getting the best, most up-to-date technology they should have to use in their classrooms. I want to incorporate all the new technologies I can find in my courses because I think future teachers should have the latest tools to use in their classrooms. I also want to make it as easy as possible for busy teachers to be able to use the available technologies. With all the new online tools such as blogging, wikis, and podcasting, there are so many exciting and user-friendly ways to use technology in the classroom.

Because I never use the same strategies any semester, sometimes I think this makes me appear a little scattered to my students at the beginning of the semester. In fact, maybe I am a little scattered because there are so many new things to learn every semester. However, we usually seem to work through the problems and things begin to move more smoothly as the semester gets going. I like teaching with technology and cannot imagine doing anything else. I just wish I could have classes that had all high school students or one content area. Having so many different majors in one classroom makes it hard to differentiate instruction. It is also difficult because my students are usually in their freshman or sophomore years of college. These students have not learned methods of instruction so to teach them how to integrate technology in their instruction seems a bit odd at this stage of their preparation. Instructional concepts are greek to them but I will stick to the job of trying to fit it in to this class. Technology integration does not make sense unless you understand what you are integrating technology into. We are integrating technology in instruction and students must understand this concept, not simply how to use technology for their personal reasons. I will persist in trying to help them understand this is the purpose of this class, even if they are taking it early. Even is what they are learning seems a bit hard at this point, they will see the benefits later. I believe that!