I think technology is an amazing tool to be able to use in any Unit Plan. Students are able to have classroom interactions because of techology that in the past, we never could have dreamed of. Students can do research right in the classroom on a computer, without having to go to the library and look up information in multiple books. They can collect data, create and analyze graphs and word process an entire report very quickly. They have access to resources all over the world. This is such a great advantage for our students.
Whats challenging in creating a unit plan that involves technology is that at some point, there has to be a limit. You can create projects or papers or experiments... by just looking it up. There is no exploration there. I truly believe you only learn if you're finding out the information yourself. Sure, you can look it up but that won't help you to remember. There has to be a line when it comes to too much technology, or using technology in a way that won't benefit the student. That seems to be my main concern when it comes to creating a lesson plan like this.
You want to make sure that the technology isn't just for looking something up, although that can be helpful. It can be a way to share information that you create as a student with others and share ideas back and forth with others. The important thing is that you are thinking about it and trying to make good decisions.
ReplyDeleteI also have my concerns with using technology just to use it. I guess the hardest part for all of us will be to become comfortable enough with these technologies so that we can find meaningful ways to use technology rather than just throwing it into our lessons. I also worry that if overused, technology might take away from exploration of a topic and so I hope that thoroughly understanding technology and how to use it will avoid that from happening.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there has to be a limit to technology use in the classroom. It has been proven that education is largely a social experience, and using google docs instead of face-to-face group work diminishes this social interaction. I think technology can be used to enhance the classroom experience, but I think we need to be careful not to over-use it.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of your point of limiting how much technology is used and for what, it is also very important to teach our students what is valid information and what is crap. There are a lot of wonderful resources out there, however when searching for multiple sources a student can easily find themselves reading less than satisfactory sources giving them the wrong impression on a topic. I think this can be especially true of students that just use wikipedia. There is a lot of great information, but many times students will go to a wikipedia page and find other resources from there. This will undoubtedly be a difficult task to keep track of, but we will have to stay vigilant if we want them to truly understand how to do research.
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