Using Technology in the Classroom

Using technology in the classroom. This topic is a that sometimes has teachers, students, parents, and administrators up in arms. Why can't we have the latest and greatest technology in our classroom? Just because a kind of technology (computers, calculators, paper, pencils...) might be new and ready for public consumption doesn't mean that it is automatically ready to used in the schools and in the classroom. A question has to be asked, "What is the educational benefit of having this new piece of technology and what is it going to provide that isn't being provided now?"

Teachers trying to answer the questions for themselves have brought into the classroom a use for publishing blogs, making a use of iPods other than a distraction in the classroom, and making the Internet more of a class wide presentation tool than a passive means of searching for information. Blogs provide a space for teachers to post lesson plans, process about the school day, and communicate with other like (or un-like minded) people. Blogs can also provide a place for student work to be published and shared to the community of students and staff or the world. Podcasts, an audio version of blogging, can give the auditory cues and voice inflection that isn't sometimes carried through the written word.

While this isn't necessarily the latest technology be invented, it is an effective means of using new technology and providing some kind of educational benefit to the students or professional who read or listen. I don't think the schools are ready for nanobots to be used to help students not fall asleep in class.