While I am writing this post as an assignment for my third course on educational technologies using a laptop, I have an iPhone beside me to read the article, paper where I wrote some notes while reading, and an iPad, where I can check the assignment rubric. there is no question that technology has taken over our daily activities an duties.
As teachers this becomes ever more evident, we use these tools to be more efficient, we deal with smarty pants students who are digital natives and we are expected to acquire a certain degree of expertise in order to survive and keep our jobs. But beside all these we can only be thankful for the great benefits of being able to innovate in so many ways.
The fact that schools have to embrace visualization, democratization of knowledge and participatory culture of learning is an understatement considering the drastic influence of technology in all aspects of our lives. Statistics are very clear about this matter, this is the age of information.
In order to captivate students and keep them engaged there must be a clear balance between creativity and skill building. We can no longer expect students to be interested in visually poor material, and even less to learn anything of real relevance unless they go through a creative process.
Visualization has always been considered an aid in the teaching-learning process, but nowadays it has become a way of learning and it has increased students performance considerably.
Technology allows us not only to make contents more visually attractive, but also interactive. And the most attractive feature of the use of visualization is the fact that it allows students to create and communicate better and more efficiently.
We can run, but we can't hide, when it comes to learning and creating opportunities, they are everywhere, including the palm of our hand. Information and therefore educational experiences come to us fast, frequently and efficiently, and as educators the saddest thing that could happen would be wasting it. students have access everywhere to learning opportunities and it is our responsibility as teachers to guide them through safe and focused internet browsing, to be aware of the different available learning objects and resources and to get rid of the former limitations such as: not understanding the teachers explanation, since there are thousands of teachers with different styles available to them on the web. Knowledge has become a democracy.
My favorite out of the three innovations is the Participatory learning, to use social media and virtual communities to show students the advantages of working together to create better products is priceless, and it's also free of charge.
I try to embrace all of these innovations as much as my limited expertise allows me, and that is one more reason to keep ourselves awake, aware, and constantly updating ourselves.
We obviously have to be very much aware that all this benefits don't come without a price, it is not an easy task to engage students when there are so many distractions. when information comes to them so easily and when the media producers that are trying to get the young ones attention are a lot more heavily armed than educators.
Vero, I completely agree on what you said that we need to guide our students when using internet. Our students are "fully armed" with technology, as you said, they have one device in their pocket, other in their backpack and a third one in their hands, so we need to work collaboratively to take advantage of having so many devices in the classroom, to model them in how to use it correctly and use it as much as we can in our classes. If we don't do that we are going to be obsolete in a couple of years!!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea that we need to educate students on the proper use of internet.Es important not to look to technology as a tool unrelated to their cognitive development.
ReplyDeleteWe are an example and as such we must integrate our classroom technology to become more meaningful learning.
We find that through technology students to achieve to be the builders of their learning.
Tania Hinojosa