Rethinking Education (ch 1) Reflection

In this new age of technology, where almost every student has access to a computer outside or school we have to be ready to use technology to teach.  Students who are going through school now have grown up with technology and don’t know any different.  A lot of us who are going into the teaching profession at this time have grown up with technology for most of our lives and have probably been using computers since we were quite young, I know I have.  This reading made me think that students are learning just as much outside the classroom as they are inside.  With the access that kids have to the internet and educational games made for computers, it is very possible that they gain a bulk of their knowledge at home and not in the classroom.  As a future teacher, I don’t want to be replaced by computer games and internet sites.  I want to be able to use that type of technology to enhance what I am teaching my students in class.  Technology is a great tool to use to more clearly explain something to a student or even show students how something that you are talking about works.  For example if you were teaching a science class about how motors work it would be hard to show students a real motor at work because they are usually hidden inside the machine they are in.  If you were a teacher who used technology in your class, you could find a website, video, or program that shows how a motor works.  This would give the students something visual that they could link with the information you have already given them.  I want to teach secondary level science and from my own experiences I know that hands on learning is a lot more fun than listening to a teacher talk about science for an hour.  I want to be able to engage my students’ minds and make them think and really learn the information.  I think that by using blogs to write about how an experiment is going or requiring technology be used in a project it will give them a new perspective on how science can be done.  It doesn’t have to be the same all the time and can be quite fun when using the right tools.