Sunday, March 21, 2010

Reflection 3

Q:What are some benefits and limitations of incorporating technology into a teachers' instructional day?

A: Incorporating technology into the classroom is a very important aspect in today's schools. In the world today, everything including entertainment, communication, etc revolves around technology. For this reason, it is important for teachers to include technology and offer their students oppurtunities to use technology as well. One of the benefits of technology use is that it can make both lesson planning and instruction easier on the teacher. While many teachers are still learning how to use technology, the use of it during their lessons will allow them to quickly present the information while allowing for pictures as well. Also when a teacher is able to type all of her information out onto a technology resource such as a powerpoint, she has less to plan and less to memorize since all of the information will be there for her when implementing her lesson. Another benefit of technology is that teachers can use videos found on the internet as well as different websites to expand on their topics. When a teacher spends most of her day lecturing and teaching, students enjoy getting a break through educational videos, reguardless of the topic. The internet is full of different educational videos that teachers can use in their lessons. Lastly, a benefit from this would be introducing the students to the different forms of technology because our world is becoming technology dependent. In the future, by the time the students are into the "real world" they will heavily rely on technology and will need to know how to use it.

Although technology is often beneficial, it can also have limitations in the classroom as well. For example, technology is not always reliable. The power may be out, the internet might not connect, and the computers just might not work. When this occurs and you were relying your lesson on the technology, it can create a problem and leave you stranded. For this reason, it is important to have back-up plans for the lesson that do not include technology so that you can still teach what you had planned and not get behind. Next, as mentioned before, a lot of teachers are still learning how to use technology and are not as skilled with it as others. This can create problems because it could take the teacher more time to create the lessons using technology, time that they do not often have.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010