As a teacher it is your job to teach in the most effective way possible. This means making sure every student has an equal opportunity to learn the material. Technology is a wonderful tool for the classroom because of its ability to cater to every learning style. For example a video would be a great tool for teaching students with visual and auditory learning styles. Technology allows the teacher to perform administrative tasks and enhance their classroom as well. The use of technology is able to foster creativity, develop critical thinking, and test students. Whatever teaching style a teacher may have the use of technology will be beneficial to them.
I believe creating clear standards for teachers is important to benefiting students. The ISTE has developed many standards with a focus on technology. The ISTE standards ensure that every teacher is technologically literate and knows how to incorporate this knowledge into the classroom. My favorite standard is NETS-S. This standard focuses on development of technological skills for students and their application. NETS-T is a standard that is currently outside of my skill set. This standard is for evaluating the knowledge and skills that teachers should have. I am still developing my skills as teacher and with practice I will be able to meet this standard.
I do agree with the term digital native. Our generation was born into a world of technology. The digital native are exposed to more technology at childhood than the generations before them. When new technology is created a digital native will have a much easier time learning how to use it than a digital immigrant. I have seen the differences between digital natives and immigrants. An example would be a professor who would type google.images.com to find an image. As a digital native I would first type what I was looking for and go to the images tab. Nothing has really impacted my learning abilities that involved technology in the classroom. In the future I will be forced to adapt and use the latest technology in my classroom. I do not think it will be a problem for me. As a digital native I will be able to quickly learn how to use this technology.
Hey Marcus, I liked reading your post and even laughed at what you wrote about "a professor who would type google.images.com to find an image" - so true. And I agree, it should be easy to learn how to use any future technology since we've grown up surrounded by so much technology already!
ReplyDeleteHi Marcus, I really enjoyed your post. I agree with you that as a teacher you must teach in the most effective way possible. I also liked how you included the example about video games.
ReplyDeleteHere is the difference. I would go type "images.google.com" first when I want to find some images. That's probably because when I first started to learn computers, I didn't use a mouse. MS-DOS, which is a keyboard-based OS, so I had been already familiar with keyboard than mouse. In MS Word, for example, I prefer to use shortcuts (e.g. CTRL+S to save). I never click the "save" icon to save the document. I'm just thinking that next generation will "touch" everything than mouse clicking!
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