Week 2 Discussion 6662 Multimedia Tools
Technology has impacted society and the many ways we do things. Education by nature is a slow beast. In comparison to various other areas of society, the pace at which education changes is very slow (Laureate Education, Inc., 2005, Program Three). Frank Laverty discussed his experience in the military and the speed at which technology affected his field.(Laverty, F., 2006) As a educator for almost twenty years I can vouch for the fact that technology does not present itself as quickly in the world of education. In addition, add to this dilemma, teachers are not typically open to new and changing technology. When I was using an Apple computer to calculate my grades in 1990, my colleagues were apprehensive about trying this new tool. The beauty of technology is not only can we use it to do things differently, but also we can use it to do different things (Laureate Education, Inc., 2005, Program Two).
I remember a time that report cards were sent around to teachers and filled out by hand. Today, a teacher can enter the grades into the computer and the computer can calculate, post, and generate reports quicker than you can open a document on my old Apple GS. When considering an area that has really changed due to the affect of technology, my thoughts went immediately to grade calculations.
Prior to becoming an educator, I worked in banking for five years. My speed on a calculator was impressive. As a teacher, when it came time to post grades, I got things done relatively quickly. As I progressed into the area of computers, it was a challenge to create formulas in Excel to calculate my grades. Once this was achieved, my results came even faster and I could share averages with the students quickly. Technology continued to advance and grade book programs were introduced to the classroom. I chose to continue using Excel due to the fact that there was not much tech support for many of the new programs. Realtime, a grading and posting program, was introduced this year to the teachers in my school; I have tended to stay with Excel, my tried and true method of grading. Unfortunately, even though Realtime is a great tool, we do have numerous problems with its use in our school.
I plan to start the 2006-2007 school year using Realtime. I think that the benefits will outweigh any problems. The students and parents should be able to check there progress at any time and grades will transfer automatically to out report system. It is amazing to think how this very small use of technology has had such a huge affect on this simple task. Today teachers are more open to the use of technology and most come to use it to their benefit, although at times they do so kicking and scratching!
It was interesting that when Dr. Thornburg had the teachers create a FAST diagram (Laureate Education, Inc., 2005, Program Two), one particular teacher after viewing his “why” and “how” realized that “life experience” would ultimately reach the same goal as education. This concept has brought me to the second part of my posting, how has technology helped me do different things. In a normal class, teachers will present information for which the students are eventually held accountable. In fact, many times a student will ask, “Is this on the test?”. Learning just for the joy of learning is not always evident.
The use of the World Wide Web has offered educators the ability to have students research, collect information for a selected project and process knowledge. These are the same words as used by Robert Webb (2000) to describe the attributes of how super achievers gained knowledge and skills through experience, not schooling. The web has opened up to educators the ability to do things that were not possible before.
In my Basic Math 4 class, we complete a project every year on tessellations. The students would be shown what to do and create their own work. Today, I can send the students on a web quest to explore the whole concept of tessellations. They not only learn how to tessellate, but they learn the history; view the work of Escher; and the work of other students from all over the world. I would never have been able to go to this depth prior to technology. This is really a mixture of both uses of technology, doing things differently and doing different things.
The real benefit to using the internet for this particular project is that the students are able to ”own” the assignment. They are asked to browse the web and choose a web quest to complete. This personalizes the assignment and therefore the learning. The result is better than anything that was achieved with regular classroom instruction.
Technology is changing constantly. We need to stay abreast of the current technologies and use them to the best of their abilities. Using technology to do things differently has benefited me personally, but to use technology to do different things has benefited the students the most. I am sure, just as Alexander Bell did not realize the direction of the telephone ( Laureate Education, Inc., 2005, Program One), the inventors of the World Wide Web had no idea that it would be so beneficial to the world of education.
If I tended to go on and on about technology, it is just that it is very exciting to me!!!!
References
Laverty, F(May 9, 2006). Discussion One of Week Two. PapDiscussion posted to http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2004). Program One: The impact of new technologies, part one. [Educational Video]. Los Angeles: Author
Laureate
Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2004). Program Two: Facing disruptive
technologies, part two. [Educational Video]. Los Angeles: Author
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2004). Program Three: Rates of
change, part three. [Educational Video]. Los Angeles: Author
Webb, R., (2000). Retrieved April 9, 2006 from http://www.motivation-tools.com/youth/what_is_education.htm