Philosophy Of Educational Technology

Philosophy of Tech. Education

Running Head: PHILOSOPHY OF TECH. EDUCATION

Philosophy of Technical Education Joshua P. Kelly University of Connecticut

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Philosophy of Tech. Ed. 2 When first introduced to the idea of creating standards for implementing technology into the classroom environment, I was extremely critical of the idea. I felt that as a future high school English teacher, technology isn’t relevant to the way that I would set up my classroom. Technology works great when dealing with tangible subjects, but English Language Arts tends to fall more on the side of abstracts and opinions- not to say that there aren’t tangibles in the field, however. Incorporating technology in a classroom that is mostly rooted in abstracts and opinions seems a rather daunting task. Then I read a quote that said we “need to use technology to move away from a teacher-centered classroom” and this caused for some reflection. Technology, if used properly, can certainly allows teachers more ways of engaging their students and potentially getting them more involved in the class dialogue. This is the point when technology went from being thought of as irrelevant to a source of internal dialogue as to how it can be made relevant for a high school English classroom. A major philosophy of mine is that while the teacher should be an anchor for the classroom, if it is too teachercentered, this neglects the building of social skills that is essential to the schooling experience. In a classroom that is more student-centered, students are encouraged to actively engage with the material to see how it may be relevant to their lives, and in doing this they will incorporate their own opinions and experiences into the class dialogue. Therefore, in order to create a higher level of discussion, technology seems to the proper stepping-stone. Technology can be used to serve many purposes. At its most basic use, technology can be used to transform the text into a way that can be visually processed through the use of video clips. I have seen this technique be used in a classroom where we were discussing Waiting For Godot and we were shown multiple video clips of various performances to show how Samuel Beckett left the setting of the play essentially up to the reader’s imagination. While rather simple, it can still be very effective if it’s not overdone and is directly relevant to the content at hand. As an English teacher, I will also be dealing a great deal with research papers. Teaching students how to use internet databases, whether just in the library at school so they can find books and articles of potential usefulness or to track down harder to find material on the internet can be extremely rewarding and aid students in learning the value of proper research. Technology has opened the world of information to students in a way that is unprecedented. However, due to this, it is easy to go overboard with technology. Technology must be used for the benefit of the curriculum, not simply for its own sake. As teachers, if students recognize that we have a firm understanding of the content being discussed, they are more likely to listen to what we have to offer- if it seems that we’re dependent on outside sources, they will have less respect for us. It is important to recognize that not all students in our classroom may have access to advanced technology at home for a multitude of reasons. The student’s family may not have the money to be able to provide technological access in their homes would be an example of how fiscal capital can be a deterrent, while a family with strong ties to agriculture or first-second-third generation immigrants from countries that are technologically behind may have difficulties grasping the importance of technology as well as how to go about using it. Therefore, this increases the importance of

Philosophy of Ed. Tech. 3 incorporating technology into the classroom environment because it’s important that all students are at the very least exposed to and taught the basics of computers and more specifically the internet. Building in power-points within lesson plans is a first step towards students recognizing technology as an important part of their education. If you are in a school with a computer lab, giving lessons to your students on how to create webblogs is a way that can directly incorporate student usage of technology- combining direct instruction on the basics of using a computer and the internet and allowing the students to directly engage with the computer. Technology supports the learning needs for high- and low-achievers due to the fact that it can help the students find the information more relevant. In this modern age, students are increasingly finding the traditional teaching methods of lecturing and writing on the blackboard not suiting their needs in the classroom. Technology can help open up dialogue that discusses not only the content but the means of how the content is presented and portrayed, can incorporate usage of videos that can present the content in a way that is more relatable to the students, and can present the material in a way that can responds to varying types of learning styles, as students tend to lean towards being a visual learner, verbal learner, or an aural learner. Studies have also shown dramatic increases in younger students of all ethnic backgrounds using technological mediums such as computers, television/videos, and music, thus it can help build a curriculum that identifies a common unity between a great number of students in the classroom. The small number of outliers (i.e. students who don’t have the means of technological usage) can be reached through ideas such as having them create web-blogs during class time, and through these lesson plans, possibly be more inclined to spend time in libraries honing their skills and maximizing their potential. Power-points and web-blogs are going to be the main mediums through which I will incorporate technology into my classroom. Each medium offers a number of benefits to all levels of academic achievers. It is my belief that web-blogs are especially useful for high-achieving students, while power-points will help low-achieving students to interact with the material a little better; however, this isn’t to say that the opposite ends of the spectrum and all the students in the middle wouldn’t be able to utilize the technologies as well. High-achieving students usually push classroom dialogue forward, therefore I believe they would be more likely to utilize to their advantage a web-blog that I could set up. The blog would be set up to post questions, newspaper articles, videos, and other mediums all in one confined place that relate to the bodies of work being discussed in the English curriculum; this would allows for students to continue dialogue established in the classroom by exploring the themes that are presented or asked about in the blog entries. This would be most useful in honors or AP level classes were students are more actively engaged with the content of the class, and therefore would tap into the various advantages a web-blog present, advantages such as: giving students who have trouble participating in class discussions, reflecting upon the videos and articles posted in a way that calls for them to discuss and draw from their own personal experiences in their progress towards making connections to how the themes are relevant to their own lives, and allowing students the chance to fully articulate their thoughts. This last theme is important because in the classroom responses are more instinctual, yet it is essential to cognitive developments to be able to hone both kinds of thinking, fully articulated

Philosophy of Tech. Ed. 4 thoughts and instinctive gut reactions, and will aid them at higher levels of education by teaching students to properly utilize quotes- on one hand to make a quick point in class or to more elaborately discuss themes through the web-blog. On the flipside, there are many advantages of using power-point to help assist low-achieving students. Power-point presentation can be an effective method of understanding information due to the fact that the material is visible. By the material being visible, this allows students to interact with it on multiple levels: reading off the screen, listening to the teacher explain the material aloud, and may make the student more inclined to take notes because it’s easier than trying to follow along and write down what the teacher is saying. Power-point presentation would only fit in well, in my opinion, with lessons on tangible content- such as grammar, sentence structure, and composition. By using power-point, students can not only see definitions for the content but also examples of how it’s used. It is through making connections of how it is used and how it is defined that students can progress forward to understanding the concepts. The most important way to gauge the effectiveness of our use of technology in the classroom is by evaluating how students are engaging with the technology. Is the technology opening new avenues of discussion? It is imperative that the technology is built in with the content; what this means is that in using power-point to explain rules of grammar, the teacher isn’t simply just reading the definition of the rule and then reading the example and then moving on. Instead, the students should be engaged- they should be asked to read the definition, and then discuss what they think it means and why is it important. Once the discussion shows a sound level of understanding throughout the class, another student can be called upon to read the example. Having students directly apply the definition to the sentence can help lead to asking students to craft more examples of how the grammatical rule can be applied. If students are able to make the proper connection between the definition of the rule and how it is presented in the example, it reinforces the power of the visual model that power-point technology provides. The ultimate goal as an educator is not simply the content itself but students understanding the content, being able to explain further and explore the content beyond what is discussed in the classroom. If students are beginning to show these levels of understanding in their web-blog discussions, in their papers, in the way they approach each text, then this can attest to the power of the technology. If students are just regurgitating information in way that is typical to a lecture-style classroom, then the technology isn’t engaging and the students aren’t getting anything from it, which means there is a failure in the implementation of the technology.