Recently I’ve become more and more agitated about the use of technology in education. I can’t help but notice that technology, as it is currently used, seems to primarily function as either:
- A stand-alone topic (“OK, kids, today we’re going to learn PowerPoint!”) OR
- Another way of doing what we’ve already been doing (“Today’s math worksheet is found at themathworksheetsite.com!”)
It’s time for us to embed technology into virtually everything we do. As Jeff Utecht writes over at The Thinking Stick, “I am tired of trying to integrate [technology] into a process, a classroom, or a curriculum that was never made to integrate technology to begin with. No, what I want is to start at the very bottom and embed technology tools, skills, and standards into lessons, our classrooms, and our outcomes.” (More here.)
I also can’t help but think that we are long past the point where every child should have a laptop throughout the school day. One Laptop Per Child is admirably working to plant laptops with wireless Internet access in schools in places like Cameroon and Ghana… and yet we don’t have the same levels of technology in most of our schools here in the United States.
Five years ago, it may have been debatable whether technology was a powerful enough tool to warrant the huge expense required to provide all students with laptops. Now, however, with technology costs having plummeted and online tools having exploded, how can we really justify not utilizing technology to its fullest potential?
January 17, 2009 at 11:53 am |
[...] there for 6.5 hours! Mark Pullen, in The Elementary Educator, writes an excellent post about Embedding Technology in Education. Although the topic does not really fit in with about teaching logic, I do see a similarity in how [...]
January 17, 2009 at 10:35 pm |
You know, I think it’s exactly the same problem that we have with math, when we treat it as a stand-alone topic or do worksheets with it. The ways math, history, technology, music, reading — really, just about everything — are used in real life by people who like and use them are way more interesting and worthwhile than what we usually do in school.
However, I was recently at a faculty meeting at which the presenters were going to call IT to have them come turn the computer on, so there may be some comfort level issues for some teachers.
January 18, 2009 at 10:17 pm |
I was a supporter of OLPC because it was helping to break down the “digital divide”, but unfortunately, it does seem to be skipping a few steps. Having technology at the core of our teaching would make sense, but we need to be careful to not have the tech be the lesson. I try to remind myself that I am not teaching the lesson because of the technology that I can use, but rather using the tech as a tool to help me to teach it better. While tech can be used to enhance some lessons, other times it can simply bog down the natural flow of learning – especially when things go wrong.
The comfort levels of teachers can have a BIG effect on the use of tech and they are doing their students an injustice to not gain some comfort by learning these new tools on their own time.
January 23, 2009 at 1:55 pm |
Great article, wish I would have thought of it! I’m all about technology and it being in the classrooms. I’m appalled at how little it is in the classrooms. And I agree with your points on how it is currently used. Teachers need more training, but have less time, our schools are decreasing its existence because there is so little money and technology takes a lot of money. You would be surprised how quickly the kids adapt and learn. They are very good at technology, but they need to learn and use technology that can help them in the work place or at college, not how better to communicate with a friend.
February 9, 2009 at 8:27 pm |
[...] I have previously written about students following their own path, selecting their own projects and learning about the things that they want to focus on in a post entitled Inquiry-Based Learning, as well as participating in a post on Mark Pullen’s The Elementary Educator entitled, Embedding Technology in Education. [...]
February 22, 2009 at 2:56 am |
Nice article, give me inspiration about Embedding Technology in Education… Thank’s.