Practical Technology In The Classroom

It is almost backwards thinking at this point for anyone to say that technology doesn't play a major part in teaching, and will continue to do so. Much in the same way we have moved from cell phones to the size of bricks to basically carrying computers in our pockets, classrooms and teachers are bringing technology into the classroom as seamlessly as possible.

Throughout my time as a student, I saw numerous different pieces of technology at use, all of which seemed to enhance the classroom experience. Most classrooms had at east one computer, in middle school more and more projectors were seen, and in some math class we used special math software on specially designed Palm Pilots instead of just the standard graphing calculator. In high school came the smart board, though I very rarely saw them used to their full potential, as the effort required to set them up and learn them didn't seem to register to most of my teachers.

Moving into college, professors began to rely on their laptops and in-class projectors, and in my observations in Public Purposes of Education, I found in my few short years away from high school that technology was making leaps and bounds in the classroom. Every classroom I saw had an up and running Smart Board, and every teacher I talked to had been thoroughly trained and were at this point adept and integrating their smart boards into their lesson. To them, it had become as ubiquitous as a chalkboard, and no less useful. Some teachers made the leap even further to out of school technological advances, using websites like Dropbox to host homework and other important materials for the students, and in once case creating a class Twitter account to assign homework, the teacher knowing that if they didn't pay attention in class, they would at least see the tweet at some point during the day.

While all of these "modern conveniences" have begun to change the way the classroom operates and how learning happens as a whole, there is a danger to all of this technology, the flipside to the coin, as it were. Digitized primary source documents and programs like Friends and Flags, as mentioned in the article "Four Takes on Technology (http://imoberg.com/files/Four_Takes_on_Technology_Allen_S.M._Dutt-Doner_K.M._Eini_K._Frederick_R._Chuang_H._Thompson_A._.pdf) act as extensions of classroom material and of what the teacher is presenting, and in a very positive way making the world a little bit smaller and more accessible to the students. Even the use of Dropbox and to a certain extent, Twitter, can act as supplements to the class, or replace methods with something a little more convenient. My fear for this though is when does it become too far? When does the technology start doing the teaching, and like many methods, the teacher and classroom becomes the way of the past? The key to this is integration, to treat the digitized documents no different than copies made from transparency sheets like I had in school, and to make them just ubiquitous parts of the classroom. Education is at its finest when the teacher and the students are collaborating face-to-face and learning from each other, and using the best tools for the subject area to accomplish that goal. Like anything, moderation and balance is key to making technology play a pivotal role in classrooms moving forward.

Hello!

Hi there, and welcome to my blog! My name is David Trachtman, I'm a Junior here at Montclair State, and I am a History major studying to be ideally a high school or middle school history teacher. I'm 20 years old and when I'm not burying myself under mountains of homework, I'm usually going to concerts, reading a good book, or in some cases writing my own! Here is where I'll be posting blog responses to readings and assignments for the semester.

Hope you enjoy!