Smart Boards are very useful educational tools, especially in math classrooms. It makes a more interactive classroom for both the learner and teacher rather than simply using “dry-erase” or chalk in a lecture style.
“People choose the SMART Board interactive whiteboard because it helps energize presentations and motivate learners. In 1991, it was the world's first interactive whiteboard. Today, it is the world's leading interactive whiteboard. Combining the simplicity of a whiteboard with the power of a computer, the SMART Board interactive whiteboard engages students and audiences around the world.” (http://www2.smarttech.com)
Most importantly, technology has qualitatively changed the way in which students conduct research. Of course, this change is good, but it comes with additional challenges, e.g., increase in plagiarism, ensuring that students learn how to discern “good” information from “bad” information, etc.
My world:
"Gamebreaker" is designed especially for coaches and trainers as a video analysis / performance analysis system enabling you to gather vital information on team dynamics and individual performances — including the competition. In previous weeks, I have explained how this technology has been helpful to educating my players and using it as a learning tool.
Website Technology: Recruiting. I created a website this summer in a education technology course at UMD. I learned all the different tools you can incorporate into a website that will help both my players and recruits. It is incredibly easy to upload video to a server that I can send through email to recruits that shows footage of campus, our facilities and game footage. This has enhanced my recruiting by putting us “ahead of the pack” because nobody else uses these tools. I can easily email game footage to parents of my players who might not be able to get down and watch their daughter as often as they might want to and I can also email some game highlights to recruits. What it does is gives more information to parents and recruits much faster than sending it via email. More importantly, these techniques also help the campus “go green” by not sending out so much mail in paper or DVD form. Less plastic and less paper! Simply put: as a coach, I can communicate with ease, information on our program, answers to popular questions, and post results, news releases, and game footage.
Quality Uses of Technology:
The upside of educational technologies is that it has literally brought the world to students’ fingertips. What would have taken hours (even days) in the past can now be accessed in minutes. If teachers are introduced to technology concepts that might enhance classroom learning the student motivation might be increased. In the RAT Framework by Hughes, Thomas, and Scharber, “technology as amplification” gives the teacher the ability to build off of current practices. Simply stated, “amplify means to make more powerful…instances of technology used as amplification are responsible for increasing the efficiency or productivity of instruction, student learning or the curriculum.” (Huges, 2006) The best way to use technology in current educational practices is to use it as an addition, not as a replacement.
Each environment, culture, and student has different needs. If educators use critical pedagogy in their thinking, they teach with all the associated variables in mind that affects the learner.
How technology might be hurtful:
The two most obvious “downsides” are using technology to supplant healthful human interaction and an over reliance on technology in place of common sense human thought.
However, there are two primary reasons education technologies are not exemplary in their present practice. First, technology is often seen as a stand-alone topic rather than a curricular thread that runs through all academic areas. In other words, schools often defer use of teaching of technology to the "computer science" courses. Second, and the other extreme of the first reason, is that technology used for technology sake deprives students of the core basic academics. Too much technology use that is not integrated into the subject are, e.g., world history, keeps kids busy but not learning much about world history.
The move to exemplary practice is integrating the use of and teaching of technology across the curriculum. It is not an add-on topic, but it is a part of the daily teaching and learning process. To avoid the extreme of too much technology for technology sake is to write strong curriculum maps that clearly identify the desired learning outcomes in every class with effective assessment strategies. The well written maps and good use of maps to drive the teaching will prevent the written curriculum from diverging from the learned curriculum.
