Integrating Technology into the Classroom
Technology is gradually changing our society; there is no doubt about that. If told ten years ago that students had the capabilities of having a robot for a teacher, one might laugh or suggest a new Hollywood movie. Now a days, this, along with many other advancements, can be a reality. Technology has added many benefits such as allowing students easy access to new information, offering a portable and affordable solution for textbooks and has even been known for grade improvement. Integrating technology into schools is a way to keep up with society and provide students with endless possibilities. However, many people believe that introducing children to technology is harmful. It can promote laziness, can be extremely expensive, and interferes with a student’s need to interact with teachers and pupils. The adaption of technology in the classroom requires alot of time invested and training of teachers. Electronics can often have quirks that hinder lesson plans. Overall, the use of technology in the classroom is in constant debate.
First of all, there are many opposed to integrating technology into the classroom. One reason people are against it is because they feel it promotes laziness. As we well know, many Americans are facing more and more health problems and obesity now more than ever. One in three American children are considered overweight (Gavin 1). Some argue that forcing our children to use technology in the classroom is a ticket for many health problems. Technology produces a completely dependent society and can often render its users helpless. A recent study proves that some children in 31 countries actually learn and process information better when they were disconnected...
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Sullivan, Lauren. "Technology In Schools: Weighing The Pros And Cons." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22 Oct. 2010. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. .
"Survey Shows Widespread Enthusiasm for High Technology." Npr.org. NPR. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. .
Suttor, John D. "Apple: School Should Center on the IPad." CNN. Cable News Network, 19 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. .
Young, Jeffrey R. "Technology." The End of the Textbook as We Know It. The Chronicle. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. .
Technology plays a very important role in today’s society. Everyone has a smart phone and we crave the latest and greatest televisions, computers, cell phones and tablets. Some of these include iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, Samsung Smart TVs, Samsung Smart watches and the new Google Glass. More and more schools are using technology in their teaching methods including our own one-to-one program at Oxon Hill High School where each student received a Samsung Google Chromebook. Technology should be used in school’s curriculum and instruction because of improved communication, innovations to come and convenience to both the students and the teachers.
“Technology has provided the opportunity to create an entirely new learning environment; it has significantly increased the range and sophistication of possible classroom activities” (Hawkins 1997). The vast majority of youths today, grow up with computers and encounter some form of digital learning (Kolikant, 2009). The idea that has had the most impact is that the technology today will be outpaced by the next generation. Most of the technology seen today will never be used by an infant when he reaches school age.
A major concern that some districts have would be the cost. They believe that providing technology to younger students would be a waste of money and would not pay out in terms of advancement in education. Even though it costs money, increasing the technological availability of kids in school does not have to be an extreme overhaul. Just slight modifications can be made to improve this issue and help prepare students for a technological society. Sarah Garland of NBC makes the note that, “Not every child has to have a computer to make it happen. Kindergartners can rotate through activities that include reading out loud from a real book, playing educational games on the four desktop computers in the back of the classroom and working one-on-one with the teacher” (Garland). Providing a technological source to kids would greatly improve productivity, not only because kids would be getting experience, but it would also cut down on the number of kids needing help at that moment. The teacher could focus on the other students at that point in time to make better use of their time. Another criticism of the idea of technology in the classroom is that the computers are decreasing students social abilities, because so much of their time is spent staring at a screen. Though it is true that much time of a child’s day is now spent on
Technology is growing every day. We use technology for everything we do, sometimes without even thinking about it. In our world, these advancements are used for communicating, entertainment, and education as well as others. Since technology is so ingrained into our lives, how much we use and depend on it is often not thought about. Our education system is on the front end of using new technology in classrooms. More and more class room and teachers are weaving it into their lesson plans and making it more available for students to use in the classroom. Technology is changing the way students are educated in America and across the world. In this paper I will discuss several ways that this can be seen and improved.
Technology in the classroom can be a good thing for many students. For example, it gives students easy access to information, but it isn’t always the best thing. Technology helps raise the illiteracy rate higher as it is used in school. In 2009, about 97 percent of classrooms had at least one computer in the classroom everyday, although approximately 54 percent could bring their own computers to their class. There was internet access available for almost 93 percent of the computers in the classrooms. Otherwise, 96 percent of the computers were brought in to the students. The average ratio of students to computers was 5.3 to 1. Since 2006 the spending rate for each school in the United States has increased about 1,250 dollars. It’s rate in 2011 was almost 10,250 dollars per pupil. Although technology can help many students and teachers, due to the fact that the use of it gets abused by some students therefore it isn’t the greatest to have at our fingertips.
Every day we deal with technology whether it is checking our phones or typing a paper. People these days cannot live without their phone in their pocket. Although this might sound like a bad thing it is not, technology has many extremely useful benefits but also some downfalls. We see in Sources A, B, and D many ways that technology has been introduced into schools that are very beneficial but these schools must also be careful due to the fact that technology can also be harmful.
In schools around the world, technology is growing at an alarming rate. This brings up one question though, is technology becoming overused in schools? There are many reasons pointing to the claim that technology is being used too much, but there are many bigger reasons pointing the other direction, that it isn’t.
Almost everyone attends a school at one time in their life whether the classroom includes technology or not. Research shows that technology isn’t used as often as one might think. The article, “High Access and Low use of technology in High School Classrooms” illustrates the use of technology by stating that only one in ten of elementary and middle school teachers are daily users of computers (Cuban, Kirkpatrick, Peck). Most schools now have classrooms that use technology throughout the entire class time and even at home to do homework. Although some people might agree with the use of technology in class, it is more harmful to the students than useful. It can cause many distractions, it can be difficult to use and can take away from learning time.
Technology is becoming more and more dominant in our society.Everyday upgrades are being made and new innovations are being discovered. Technology is all around us whether we want it to be or not: it is the vehicles we drive, it can be found in our homes, and can even be found in the grocery store.Every place we look there is some type of technology.I believe technology has had a major impact on our school systems and is still impacting it today.There are those who do not agree, though, that technology has impacted our schools.Eric Gormly writes, “In fact, many theorists point out the overall impact of technology on education has been quite small, manifesting little discernible change in the classroom.” [1]Yes, there are some schools that are not as advanced as others, but many of them do have a significant amount of technology in them.I find it fascinating that so much technology has been incorporated into our classrooms, but I believe that, even with all of the positive aspects that are associated with technology, there are some negative and even dangerous aspects that should be taken into account.I will be sharing some of the equipment that has been used in the schools, how both the students and the teachers use the equipment, and also the positive and negative effects that technology has had on our schools.
Do you ever think about how much technology has changed the way we work, learn, play, and even think? Technology is a major beneficiary to society; especially in the classroom where we get the opportunity to learn and grow. In recent years, schools have begun implementing tablets and other devices in the classroom to better student’s education. The use of technology in the classroom provides more of a personalized learning experience and gives students a widespread availability to engage in learning. Technology is necessary in today’s modern globe, it is basically “the pen and paper of our time and the lens through which we experience much of our world” (Warlick, 2013). Technology is not just considered the “internet”, it is so much greater than that. Overall, it enhances the quality of education and engages students deeper than ever before. With all the significant gains, why would people argue that technology hinders students more than it helps? Critics may try to repute the use of technology in the classroom but I believe what really matters “is the way we use it, the context that we use it in, and the learners who we use it for” (Chong, 2012).
To begin with, before anyone can develop an opinion as to whether technology is a useful tool in the classroom, one needs to understand that technology plays an important role in today’s world. However, the use or over-use of technology in educating young children in teaching literacy to young children is a much debated theory. There are many opinions regarding the positive influence technology can have as a useful tool in the classroom, yet there are those, like myself, who also see the negative aspect of too much technology.
The opinions of some professors and teachers are that technology alone will not transform what their students are learning in the classroom (Millichap, 2000). If technology helps teachers to become better at teaching and helping our children at all ages to learn and comprehend; then it needs to be recognized. One of the hardest things that need to be worked on is the acceptance of technology being implemented into the schools. Some parents, teachers and even students admit that there are cons to technology also. It’s easy to become distracted while on the internet looking up information with Facebook, Twitter, and store websites. Parents need to accept their roles in their children’s lives and set boundaries; such as homework before playing video games, or only allowing so much time on the computer. A way of doing this is setting a timer for the allotted time and when it goes off your child is
Andy Carvin states “ internet access in schools isn’t worth a hill of beans if teachers aren’t prepared to take full advantage of technology” (2000). Schools spend a lot of money on computer hardware and software as well as other technologies without realizing that many of their employees are unprepared to include them in their teaching and use them to their advantages. Educators often use technology as a classroom management tool rather than an educational one, allowing computer time as a reward for good behavior (Clark & Gorski, 2001). The problem with this is that students learn to use the computer for games and such because it is their reward instead of using it on their own time for educational purposes. This is teaching them the wrong idea. Margaret Honey, director of the Center for Children and Technology in NYC said it best, “The bottom line is, you don’t just put technology into schools or into homes and expect miracles to happen. The technology is only as good as the program that surrounds it” (Meyer, 2002, p.2).
Technology has changed many aspects of our lives, so why should we expect less of the classroom atmosphere? Technology in the classroom has changed the way students learn and the way teachers teach. Technology today is integrated into the classroom as a teaching tool rather than being taught as a course. There are many ways that technology is used in today’s classroom such as the World Wide Web, Power Point, and Excel (Starr, 2011). Teachers will continue to be the most important aspect of a child’s education because they teach and technology does not. The use of technology in the classroom can bring advantages to a child’s education but can also bring disadvantages (Cleaver, 2011).
...ass. School administrators should remember not to force technology into their curriculum unless they are confident in the student 's ability to learn and correctly recall information presented. When students have no desire to learn and are given tools to distract themselves technology hurts them, or rather their test scores, more than students who learn with book or oral based teaching because the absence of distraction. Computers and iPads are very difficult to repair or replace compared to books, and because most people are not yet “technologically literate” enough to perform basic tasks for the maintenance of their computer, then it would just be easier to use books. These issues create question as to if students are ready for classes to require computer knowledge when some have difficulty learning the material as it has always been learned for thousands of years.