MY Idea of Education Technology

My Idea of Educational Technology

 

 

Part of understanding Educational Technology is to research…. EVERYTHING. Read journals, blogs, articles, and even notes from national technology conferences. This is exactly what I did, and wow, there are so many different viewpoints. After reading, I found that my feelings and ideas of technology within education became more concrete. I feel you can never have enough technology in the classroom, and students are always eager to learn new ways to do things. The most important element when integrating technology is “education.” Teachers and students must be ready to learn the product and when/how to use it. Technology is not “the way of the future,” but instead it is the now. We communicate and network with technology, and almost all jobs have a prerequisite of some level of technological knowledge. The concept of Educational Technology is more of a verb, than a subject or noun. Both education and technology are ever-changing through a progression of ideas and the death of current and past programs. Educational Technology is an act, or action. It is the act of “DOING” within education; the hands-on experimentation of hardware, software, programs and digital knowledge.

 

Searching the Net

Educators have a responsibility to teach students how to search the internet for information. There are so many ideas being exchanged online, that it can be mentally overwhelming or exhausting to process fact from fiction. The fictional information can be fun to read, or it can help frame ones ideas on any topic. Students must learn that the fact is what matters. While teaching high school, I came across so many papers that cited Wikipedia. We spent one week as a class examining what was a credible/valuable website, and why. I am confident in my past web-based information searches because I had an amazing teacher my first year of college. We did not use the web much when I was in high school because it was foreign to my teachers, and they were scared to enter the world of the web. Since the internet is used by all “digital natives” educators today must teach proper searching skills, and social network etiquette.

 

Social Bookmarks

I am a HUGE fan of Pintrest. When I had a baby girl, I found that I can craft with the best! This past May I was introduced to a social bookmarking site for crafters. Pintrest allows users to network with other crafters and gather ideas/projects to bookmark or “pin” on their digital corkboard. I "pin" ideas and submit my projects all the time! Using this concept with students is a great idea. I have never used a social bookmarking site for educational purposes (crafts can be educational, but not too useful when researching information). There have been many times I was online reading an article, when my computer froze. After turning it back on, I could not find the site I needed. This was always frustrating, but digital social bookmarks would keep that URL for you to retrieve later. These sites would also be beneficial for entire classrooms. Students could mark sites for others to look at, and all the class could easily access information.