Few features of technology that I've learned from EDCI 505

What I've learned so far regarding technology and education:

GlogsterEDU

This was definitely something new I've learned, that was surprisingly useful for visual projects. This application lets users create interactive posters with text, links, videos, pictures, and etc. I strongly believe in the power of visual media to education, and this would definitely grab students' attentions. I could think of many ways to incorporate this into future classrooms, like projects and assignments. It's a great way for both teachers and students can have fun while learning.

SymbalooEDU

This is a site that allows people to organize useful websites, blog RSS feeds and medias. I think teachers can use this to share great resources with students, not just teachers to students but from students to students as well!

GoogleDocs

I've seen my sister used this a lot when she's working with her school projects, but I've never worked with googledocs before, so this was definitely something new I've learned from this class. Google Docs were incredibly useful to my surprise. For example, we can use a spreadsheet to create a grade book and it lets us calculate all the grades for us as well as creating quiz and etc. I especially like to use this as gradebook in the future because it also lets us organize all the grades into graphs.

Why do we need technology in education?

American children today spend 10 hours a week online on average.
Today, we can carry internet in our hands in the form of the smartphone.

We are living in extremely technological world today.
And this question is, shouldn't education incorporate technology as well?

I'm not saying we weren't incorporating technology in education so far,
when I was in high school, I was supposed to type all my essays and papers, as well as doing research paper finding resources online.

Well, first of all, why is it so important to incorporate technology to our classroom?
It can definitely enhance learning environment, but do we really need it?

In my opinion, yes we do need it.
It is essential to have some information on today's technology as students will need it throughout their life. In fact, we've been using technology that were essential at the time throughout the entire era.
That's shown in this video:



We've been using text books in education so far, and that's technology. We just have to switch text books into computers, that doesn't neccessarily mean replacing the text book, but we can use both of them for learning diversity.

Here are my personal reasons for using technology in classroom:

1.) Students are used to technology in home environment whether it's TV, computer game, PSP, ipad, smartphone. If we incorporate familiar technology in projects, it would be easy for students to engage in those projects.
2. It gives professional developments for students. Wherever we go and whatever job we'll have in today's world, it'll require some knowledgement of technology. By incorporating technology in classroom, we are teaching students informations they need to learn and how to navigate around technology as well.

(On personal note, I really wished that my high school teachers gave me more research papers so I would've learned how to find good online resources for research)

Technology is really just a tool, if we think we can educate our students better without technology, great. However, in my opinion, I think technology can be a great tool in education.

I'm just going to put this video about technology in education because I loved it so much: