Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Blog Post #12

I chose to do this blog assignment on negative effects of using technology in the classroom. I feel like we have spent a lot of time arguing for technology in the classroom (which I fully agree with) but I wanted to explore the other side of it in this assignment.

Student should read Negative Effects of Using Technology in Today's Classroom as you read think about your feelings on the points that are raised. After reading write a post summarizing the article and your personal thoughts and feelings about what was written. It may be helpful to also read the comments that were left. Follow the requirements of Writing A Quality Blog Post.

My Post:
Negative Effects of Using Technology in Today's Classrooms
I thought this was fairly interesting. Though I did not think the points made in the post were really negative effects, I found them more of a warning to teachers of the potential things that could happen when using technology in the classroom. The author made three points in their post. The first was "Takes Away Learning Time". I agreed with this point. Some students are at different levels and have different skills when it comes to technology. In most cases it goes back to how much do they use technology outside of the school, especially for younger students.They argue that problems that come along with computers and internet technical difficulties take away from valuable teaching time. I see the point here. I know that in my own experience computers in the schools are sometimes old and take a lot of time to get to what you want them to do or freeze up in the middle of it. So that could be a good reason or argument against using technology on a daily basis.
The second thing was "Overuse". His argument here is that sometimes technology is overused and some students require physical and mental interaction with what is being taught. The author feels
Technology should be used to supplement the classroom curriculum, but should not be used as the sole source of learning.
I agree that technology should not be the sole source of learning but I also feels that students can still be physically and mentally involved while learning through technology.
The third thing was students sometimes have a "Game Mentality" toward computers and technology. I have also witnessed this with students. I feel part of that falls on the shoulders of the parents and teachers. I know in my own experiences when I have been in the computer lab with students observing most of the time they are playing games, educational games, but still games none the less. I think students should be introduced to new areas of technology. They should know that there is so much more opportunity while using the computer than just playing games. So yes I do feel that some students may lose focus easily if not monitored and given proper instruction but I don't feel that would be a reason to omit technology from the classroom.
I feel the author had some good points which I agreed with but like I said earlier they were more of warnings than reasons not to incorporate technology in the classroom. We should as classroom teachers take all of these things into consideration but not let them hold us back from introducing technology to our students.
teacheratchalkboard

1 comment:

  1. Good idea! And well done on the actual assignment. You are one of the few who has completed all of the requirements of this post!

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