Student Friendly-ness

Prompt: "Are there ways that technology might help with writing and communicating' student friendly' learning objectives?"

I see technology certainly assisting in the creation of student friendly learning objectives. Technology allows us to communicate with our peers and bounce ideas off of each other. Social studies teachers can talk with other colleagues across the world, perhaps Mr. Smith of New England has a knack for developing student friendly objectives and he can assist Mr. Brown of Wisconsin. For example, the blog we read to inspire this post would have been completely innaccessible without this technology, but we are now able to see what Mr. Ferriter thinks and better learn how to adapt objectives to students' needs.

With communicating the learning objectives the possiblity exists that, with older students, the objectives could be sent via email/update prior to class to prepare the student for that day's lecture. It also allows the possibility to do a follow-up after each lecture to see if the students are understanding the materiel. It also opens the door to more parent-teacher relationships and allow the parents to actively provide input to their child's educational objectives.

I don't see many downsides to using technology to creating and communicating these learning objectives. Perhaps an educator could more easily piggy-back on another's objectives, making it unauthentic. But this, any most other downside, simply become easier with technology, not perpetuated by it. In short, I see technology as an extremely helpful tool for communicating valuable ideas between educators leading to the creating of student friendly objectives.

PTL,

-Travis Ray

My Technology Experience

Growing up I was a part of the Lincoln Public School system. We had always had computer labs, though times that we got to use them were few and far between. They were used almost exclusively for teaching us typing and it wasn't until high school that we were using the internet for academic purposes. My school was not the wealthiest, so we used the older equipment, such as the projector, but we were also given first opportunity to access new technologies, such as the Elmo, a tool that sat on a teacher's desk and project their writtings onto the board.

Since coming to college, technology has played a key roll in my academic endeavors. Most professors use blackboard on a weekly basis: assignments are given, answer keys are accessed, grades can be viewed, etc. Many of my classes require lab sections which often require some technology to take and analyze the data. Even in lecture based classes, technology, specifically computers and the internet, play key roles in my current education.

Technology has certainly permeated the educational world. Slowly, but surely new technologies are trickling their way through the school systems. I view this new development as both a blessing and a pitfall. The amazing aspect of the technological advances is having the world at our fingertips. I research, communicate, write papers, etc. all from a single device. Information that was previously inaccessible or extremely difficult to obtain is now readily available and just a mouse click away. There are, however, many academic downsides that I feel are overlooked. The first being a lack of pure research. In the days of old a paper required many hours perusing books, studying texts and learning how to critically analyze a document. With the internet I can get the wikipedia or sparknotes quick answer without putting any significant effort in the project. I feel like this leads to a decreased ability to critically analyze texts, as well as, alienation from ones work.

In short, technology will undoubtedly play a large role in the future of education. It offers many possibilities previous generations did not have, but also overcasts some of the appreciable qualities gained from older methods. I will certainly use technology in my classroom, but I will hope and pray that it is simply a tool to be used when needed and not a crutch upon the students' education.

Live for Him,

Travis Ray

First Blog

This is my first blog for teac 259.