Shifting Technology in Education

This article “Implications of Shifting Technology in Education” looks at technology trends and the consequences these trends will have on the present students and future students and what changes need to be made.  It also discusses the capacities of growth in new media and the technology industry and how they are pointers of increasingly flexible, value of technology and personalize of technology.  This article also discusses potential pitfall that need to be addressed. Lastly this article also looks forward as to where this new technology will take us as teachers and students.  Also if switching technology every time the latest and greatest things come out is wise, and the positives and negative affects this can have on our students.  This article also mentions how even though technology has advanced and teachers have to a point that colleges have not quite jumped on board and how ineffective that type of teaching can actually be, it sends the wrong message to professionals.

This article had some major points that students need personalized instruction and that when student get personalized instruction that real learning happens.  I think many people are put off by this thinking that it would to overwhelming and not able to happen in the classroom but it is already happening in the classroom and with technology inter-graded it’s called differentiated instruction.  The difference now is that it is more technology based.  I still believe that technology should enhance learning not become the mode of teaching.  This article was insightful as to what we are doing today and the implications of tomorrow.

Holland, J., & Holland, J. (2014). Implications of Shifting Technology in Education. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 58(3), 16-25.

Twitter based Assingment

In the article STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF A TWITTERBASED ASSIGNMENT IN A GRADUATE-LEVEL INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY COURSE it is an insightful article about the challenge of learning while using technology.  If further discusses three students’ obstacles and achievements while using technology as a medium.  Some of the obstacles using twitter were character limitation, phone compatibility; or learning how to use twitter efficiently to do the assignment.  Many times the students felt that they even thought they were completing the assignments they were not able to respond to post without it being a hassle or they had to hunt for the thread to respond to a person’s tweet.  Other times they felt that due to the character limitation that meaningful conversations were not able to happen often time leaving them frustrated.    A negative and positive aspect was that the student felt they were more focused on the assignment and were doing the assignment even when they were not meaning to, they felt there was not a switch to turn off the assignments.  This was viewed as negative and positive by the students, some students saw that the assignment was being done without thought and had to intentional stop and post and respond later others felt that the assignments were intruding in on their personal life that there was no separation.  Overall using this technology while they students thought it would be a technology medium that was be useful most did not like the technology as a whole. 

This article to me proved that just using technology in the classroom is not a good reason to use technology.  When using technology in the classroom you have to think with the end in mind.  What is the outcome that you want the technology to achieve?    Who is using the technology and is it a good fit for all the users.  In education we have students who are gifted, normal, below normal and special.  Technology is not a one size fits all while reading this article I found that there were things that the students liked but more importantly there were limitations that hindered the creativity of the students.  Most of the time the students felt frustrated trying to use the technology medium designed for this course when doing assignments.  As a teacher this is what you want to avoid at all cost.  The lesson I took away is technology can be a wonderful outlet but as a teacher using the technology or assigning the technology it need to enhance the lessons not hinder the learning of the student.   

Nygard, S., Day, M., Fricke, G., & Knowlton, D. S. (2014). STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF A TWITTERBASED ASSIGNMENT IN A GRADUATE-LEVEL INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY COURSE. Quarterly Review Of Distance Education, 15(4), 1-14.

Instructional Technology in Rural School

Technology in a Rural School

My article Instructional Technology for Rural Schools: Access and Acquisition talks about the uniqueness of Rural Schools and the difficulty in obtaining instructional technology compared to Suburban areas schools.  When you think of the education requirements that the government places on the states such as No Child Left Behind, or Race to the Top, everyone wants to be successful and larger districts plan to be successful by meeting the requirement but then the question is asked how do we fund this and therein lies the problem with low SES rural districts. 

Many teachers agreed that technology is an excellent tool to help them facilitate teaching, and the benefits for Special Needs and ELL students closing the gaps were significant but many teachers and rural districts are still left with creative ways to bridge the gap and include technology in their schools. Another factor that hindered technology being used in the classroom was professional development teachers were not getting to explore the technology this study showed that if the teachers were being taught and shown technology the teachers used the technology in the classroom.  The last problem was support and resources.  Many districts do not have the funds to provide the resources needed to support the teachers learning.  Though it did mention that teachers usually saw the necessity and with bought the resources themselves or found free resources.

I also teach in an large district where money is allocated for technology and we have current and up to date technology but talking with my sister-in-law who lives in a rural community I see the difference there school district is constantly doing fundraisers for to upgrade the items that they need be it books, technology, buildings you name it.  As our discussion progressed she made mention that they were doing a fundraising to buy the whole school district i-pads and to do away with textbooks and we discussed the pro’s and con’s of being able to access the books needed via computer versus lugging an outdated book around school. 

I felt that this article gave a lot of valuable information regarding technology integration and how costly it can be to incorporate it in a school district.  It affects my class in that because we are always looking to improve technology integration and the latest new gizmo that sometimes what you have being low tech or high tech needs no improvement.  Just find what works for the classroom that you are working with.

References

Sundeen, T. H., & Sundeen, D. M. (2013). Instructional Technology for Rural Schools: Access and Acquisition. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 32(2), 8-14.