Education and Technology

As an educator you need to be informed about every aspect of the world growing around us. From the type of music our students are listening to, the T.V. shows that consume them, and the technology that fascinates them every hour of every day. We are a society that thrives off of the technology around us. I mean, how amazing is it that nowadays we can watch tv, check our email, listen to and store music, take videos and pictures, plus make phone calls ALL on the same device?! It’s pretty awesome!

Students today are living in a world that is vastly different from their parents and my own. I am 24 but I can remember the first “tech class” I ever had. Our school got computers when I was in 4^th or 5^th grade and our teacher made us all go on a computer that had the most simplistic spelling game ever! It was basically a black screen with teal, pink, and yellow stick figures and letters. I loved it! I enjoyed learning how to spell new words on the computer and typing away on the keyboard. I laugh thinking about it now because today’s generation would have hated that game since their technology is so much more exciting and realistic.  

Students today LOVE using technology in the classroom because they are constantly exposed to it and they know how to use it. They are brave and confident in their abilities so they seem to retain more of the information provided to them.  There are schools here in Illinois that have entire classrooms based off of the use of computers or tablets. Unfortunately, not all schools have that luxury so, most buildings contain a computer lab or classroom that house the majority of computers that the entire school must share. This is a challenge in trying to incorporate technology into any teachers’ curriculum.

Recently in class we were discussing the different challenges educators, and schools face when trying to obtain a bare minimum ‘functioning’ technology. Money, teachers, the upkeep, and much more prevent a lot of schools from reaching this goal. That’s why it was surprising for me to see the results in the graph below from ‘Project Tomorrow Speak Up’ survey that shows how Parents, Principals, and District administrators want to add the use of technology in the classroom as a portion of what teachers are evaluated by.

Project Tomorrow SpeakUp Survey

I don’t think the use of technology should be used as a major factor in a teacher’s evaluation, but a small component. Perhaps under classroom management or instruction, but definitely not as a solo part of a teacher’s evaluation. If every classroom was well equipped and every teacher had the same technological knowledge or capabilities then I would say “have at it principals and district administrators!” but since that’s not the case I don’t think that it should be a huge portion of a teachers evaluation.

For younger teachers that have grown with technology we probably feel that it is expected of us to use a form of technology in our classrooms because that’s how we’ve developed new ways for our students to learn and new ways for us to teach. But I do feel that for teachers that are used to a specific way of teaching, incorporating technology in the classroom may be a really difficult adjustment that they may not like. At the end of the day though, a good teacher will make accommodations for his or her students and provide new and improved ways of teaching in the classroom.