Jordan Filerman
When I am in class, using technology is one of the best ways a teacher can captivate me in the classroom. Computers are a huge part of the educational experience because they achieve success in grasping the attention of students and also making class easier for the teacher. Some issues that the book brought up about using computers in the classroom are teacher skills and copyrights. I agree with both of these issues because it is a huge concern to me, as a future teacher, as to how much technology will excel in the future. In order to teach a class effectively with technology, a teacher must make sure they are on top of new technology just as much as the students are. I also agree that copyrighting is an issue because with so many internet sources available, it is so easy for a student to plagiarize without even knowing it.
In the future, I plan to use technology as much as I can in the classroom without getting too much of a separation between my students and I. One of the main technological devise I plan to use is presentational software. As a future English teacher I know that it is sometimes hard to grasp the hidden messages inside books, and presentational technology would be able to help my students understand these meanings. As the book states, the planning process of presentations is key. As a teacher I plan on doing a lot with having my students do presentations on certain chapters of books or readings. One thing I plan on learning in this class to help me with this is to be able to master the planning process of these presentations as well as how to teach them to my future students.
I agree with the term digital native to define today’s youth because the majority of the youth today have a firm understanding when it comes to using newer technologies. Most teenagers today know how to make a facebook, or ask their Iphone what the weather is like. This is mainly because of the reason given in the podcast that digital natives didn’t have to adapt to technology because they can’t remember a time without it. In contrast, digital immigrants have to choose to adapt to these technologies and that leaves many of them confused or just not up to figuring newer technologies out. I have found that most of my teachers would fall under the term of digital immigrants because they used older technologies, such as overheads, to teach lessons. This has made class for me more dull and drawn out than it needed to be. I think there will be a gap between the way I use technology and the way my students do because technology is still discovering new things and eventually I will be too busy to be able to learn them all.
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