This article talks about how important technology
is in the life of a student. It also talks about how teachers need to be equipped
to know and teach the technology. While I believe that technology is awesome
and needs to be learned I believe in my 1st grade classroom you have
to have the building blocks of learning first. For example I believe you need
to be able to add before you just use a calculator to give you the answers.
With that said you can learn to read with technology and that is amazing. This
past week I hung out with my three year old niece and taught her how to play on
the website starfall.com. She was able to click on letters and watch a little
video explaining what sound each letter makes and words that start with that
letter. What is awesome about this is that she loved it and she was learning
some basic reading skills, at three that will help her to learn how to read.
Sadly, when I started this year I got students from three different schools.
Some of my students didn’t know their letters or their sounds and they were six.
These are two very important aspects of
reading that they should have learned in Kindergarten, if really not before.
The article says that “the more
content-specific the example, the more likely the teacher will see value and
learn it.” This quote is very true. If I can’t see where I would use something
specifically in my day-to-day routine it is kind of a waste of my time and the
person trying to teach it to me. I’ve got to be able to go in the next day and
plug it in or it isn’t very useful to me.
Part of me truly thinks it depends
on what grade you teach as to whether technology is all that important. I like
it and use it, but I know a few teachers who don’t. Last year I was in a Pre-K
class as the assistant. The morning teacher was older and didn’t like
technology and rarely, if ever, used it. The afternoon teacher was younger and
used it just to do the calendar and message. Both classes learned about the calendar,
were able to count on it, do the days of the week, see patterns, and the months
of the year. I don ‘t really think the morning class missed out on anything
because they didn’t use as much technology as the afternoon class. I don’t know
that I would agree had the classes been older, but for Pre-K it didn’t make a
difference.
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