Blog Post 1

Teachers and students are influenced by society to use technology in the classroom. The rapid development of technology requires us to stay up-to-date with our skills on being able to use it. Also, technology is used in all career fields, so we must prepare our students for potential use in their careers. Technology also makes our lives easier and connects us to the rest of the world via social media, and this connection can be utilized to increase learning and student attention in class.

The ISTE standards include being a learner, leader, citizen, collaborator, designer, facilitator, and analyst. I agree thinking that these are all valuable skills for a an educator to have in order to be an effective teaching. A teacher should always be able to learn from others whether it be their peers or even their students. They should be able to lead and command respect and inspire their students to learn. By being a citizen, they are helping their professional community continue to grow and develop. This involves the collaborating with other professionals. Designing new lesson plans and classroom activities is part of being a good educator. The two standards I feel that I do not fully meet yet are the facilitator and the analyst. I do not have the knowledge of technology yet in order to fully apply it to my lessons to help learning. I also am only at the beginning of my statistics class, so I do not have the skills yet on how to review the data I collect from grades in order to understand the impact of my lessons and alter them to be better.

I disagree with the label "digital native" for today's youth. I grew up with the internet, but it was not prominent in my childhood. My siblings and I were not given phones until 6th grade, and growing up, our parents encouraged us to spend our time outside and limited our time watching television or playing computer games each day. Because of this, we were raised spending time outside, playing sports, and reading books. I also have seen my Mimi, my maternal grandmother, use an iPhone and laptop as well as I do. This makes me believe that when you were born has little impact on your ability to use technology; it only matters how much you use it and the effort which you make. My teachers have always used a lecture-based way of teaching, so I have never experienced technology in the classroom outside of Powerpoints and the occasional SmartBoard, so I am unsure the level of understanding which most teachers have for technology and how that would impact a classroom environment. I personally learn best and enjoy learning the most when a classroom is set up in a lecture format with discussion days. I retain my information best by handwriting. Even in college, I do not take notes on my laptop because when I do, I end up copying everything down by hand to gain retention of the material. This makes me believe that technology is not a one-size-fits-all tool in the classroom due to various learning types.