Misgivings aside, I'll use my first post as an opportunity to play devil's advocate. I think that youth and technology can be a disastrous combination. Page 30 of my required textbook ironically emphasizes with students who felt like they shouldn't have to read textbooks when they can learn everything by watching television or playing video games. This reminds me of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when schoolchildren were encouraged to rebel against their teachers. Likewise, today's technological revolution is turning the traditional teacher-student relationship upside down. We are to believe that books no longer matter and that teachers, most of them digital immigrants, are dinosaurs. Young people are now the obvious leaders in the classroom. Never mind their lack of intellectual or emotional maturity, or the fact that most digital natives waste their skills on such foolishness as uploading videos of their attempts at the cinnamon challenge.
That being said, young learners can harness their technological savvy to further their education as long as their teachers properly guide them. To be sure, it's much more efficient to use the internet than an offline card catalog for research purposes. I will explore the benefits of technology more in depth in future posts.
Interesting spin on the topic assigned. I am appreciative of your opinion and hopefully throughout this course you will see the benefits of integrating technology into the classroom and the idea that it does not necessarily replace reading books. It definitely does seem as though books are going by the wayside as my daughter attends a boarding school and they now use ipads with their books loaded on it. The truth is, having an ebook may be a way to save money because they can be updated in real time when history is changing or new editions are released. The world is certainly changing and technology is something that is a constant in our daily lives, whether we want to embrace it or just acknowledge that it exists.
ReplyDeleteAs with everything else, there are good and bad points with integrating technology in the classroom. It is the teacher's responsibility to monitor what the students are learning. As long as this occurs, I have no problem with technology being in the classroom. That being said, I do not believe the classroom should be totaly dependent on technology. In my view technology can be a blessing, but it can also be a curse. I wouldn't mind if it were drawn back a little.
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