Technology in Education

I believe that technology should be an essential part of education in the 21st century. The students who come to us are using these technologies at home and to ignore them (or disallow their use) at school is doing our students a disservice. In a blog post that I just read today, Sylvia Tolisano was talking about "connecting your classroom to the world" in terms of using a blog with your class. In her post, she described a podcast by Wes Fryer where he described the difference between technology that is accommodating and that which is transformative. She said that he described technology being accommodating when you use it to replace non-digital learning. I believe that this in itself is not a bad thing. I think that this is where we need to start in our classrooms. Where we need to move towards, however, is using the technology in a transformative way...where what the students are learning would not exist without the technology.
Students are very adept at learning new technologies (as illustrated by my summer school class students who are 6, 7, and 8 years old). It's time for us as teachers to think outside the box and look at the projects that we already do with our students and ask ourselves, "how can I do this project with technology?". If I create a graph with my students, why can't I do it using Excel or some other graphing program? If my goal is to have my students learn how to collect data, create a graph, and then interpret the data, then what's to say that we can't do it electronically? Why do we have to use paper, pencil, and crayons? Using technology, and more specifically Web 2.0 tools, can open your students to a world that exists beyond the four walls of your classroom. This is important for our students today as they grow up in a global society. Technology can help prepare them for their future in our society, but it can also link them to people all over the world. Their world has expanded beyond the town that they live in! When I first started blogging with my students two years ago, they were so excited about the fact that their writing could be read by people all over the world, including in China (where a classmate had just moved back to). This gives their words power. It connects them to others. It helps make them more aware. I think by using more technology in our classrooms, our students will become more motivated and focused on the lessons we are teaching. They are seeing it as "fun"...I look at it as the vehicle that I am using to engage them in their learning and motivate them to learn more. Being focused, motivated, and engaged, this is what technology in education can do for our students.