EDT 5410: Week One Analysis

In reading the article Beyond Technology Integration, I find myself agreeing with it not being the use of technology but how to teach it. In the conclusion it states "These changes highlight the need for us to go beyond technology integration with teaching to technology transformation of teaching and learning."

I feel that there are teachers out there that need to change the way in which they are teaching a class and focus more on the method of attainment-based instead of time-based. I am not saying that teachers aren't willing to do this but perhaps there are those out there that don't understand the difference and they themselves need to be trained in a different teaching method.

When I was in school it was totally standardization and like the article states it needs to be more customized. Certain students can not learn as fast as others and that in turn holds back the students that can. So, yes some customization needs to be done in the schools. I think once that is corrected students will be able to learn more and at the correct pace for that individual.

I am sure that is a lot of work for the teachers and they don't get paid nearly enough for the work they do and that is a totally seperate issue! But, I know that there are those excellent teachers out there though, who are willing to go above and beyond for the sake of the student and those are the teachers I hope will eventually be teaching my children.

Now as far as the Luddites article, I disagree with him for the most part. I understand the views on why do we need to keep updating technology and how it puts old technology out of business but he needs to understand that the world is ever changing. And part of living is to change with the times. The way he acted towards the car salesman about the cruise control and power locks just shows his resistance to technology changes. I work with several people who are not willing to learn the new technology trends and they are very hard to work with. They feel if it's not broke than don't fix it but, I say why not improve it? I don't feel that technology changing is a bad thing and I do feel that we need to have our K-12 students learning from the latest technology.

The fact is that our environment, our world runs on technology and if we don't educate the generation coming up from K-12 then what will happen in the world. Will the students graduating from the schools here be able to compete with those across the world. Our schools need to have technology in them and we need to figure out the best way to teach this to them so they can have prosperous and successful lives of their own someday. We are preparing them for the world of tomorrow and you need technology to do that!