Philosophy of Technology in Education

Created with Tagxedo

Beneath the cut is my philosophy of using technology in education



     I believe that technology can be used in a great number of ways to support and assess learning.  I believe it can and it should.  As this article states, "Traditional academic approaches. . . won't develop learners who are critical thinkers or effective writers and speakers."  Students are immersed in technology in their lives outside of the classroom. If I, as an educator, do not work to foster the skills they need to use those technologies to communicate and learn effectively, I am failing them.  Furthermore, just as I will teach my students how to stay safe and be respectful in social situations they will have face to face, I am also responsible for guiding my students on how to stay safe and be respectful in a digital world.  

     On the other hand, Orion magazine claims, and rightly so, that it is imperative to provide real-life experiences for students as often as possible.  I completely agree.  I believe that feeling, hearing, seeing, and experiencing something firsthand will always provide the most enriching learning experience.  I am an outdoor enthusiast and a daily bicycle rider. I am completely in support of developing a richer connection with my immediate surroundings and of helping my students develop the same.  However, what about if I, here in Bellingham, want to learn about a frog that lives in the Amazon rainforest?  I can't very well travel there to study it and I certainly couldn't bring an entire class along.  However, I can find articles online that describe it, photographs that show me what it looks like in its natural habitat, and maybe even videos of its life cycle.  I believe, hands down, these rich multimedia experiences provide me a much more relevant and meaningful learning experience than reading an encyclopedia article from the library.

     Another benefit that technology brings to the classroom is the opportunity for collaboration.  According to research cited by Brigid Barron and Linda Darling-Hammond in this Edutopia article, student collaboration leads to deeper understanding of material.  This quarter, I discovered some of the amazing tools for collaboration and communication that are available such as blogs, websites, podcasts, video, online brainstorming utilities (such as EdiStorm), online presentation utilities (such as Glogster and Prezi) and more.  All of these tools are a click away and provide students multiple mediums with which to share what they have learned and to learn from their peers as well.

      Technology can also provide many different kinds of adaptations for students with learning disabilities or students learning English.  From word processing software that can read a student what they have written to built-in dictionaries that help students define words as they read, the breadth of assistive technology is expansive.  Assistive technology helps everyone to be able to access the same curriculum with varying levels of support that might otherwise be impossible to offer.  For example, the speaking word processors allow students to hear a voice read back the sentence or paragraph they just wrote; it would be extremely inefficient for a teacher to try and get around to every student and provide the same support.

     Above all, technology in the classroom, like anything else in life, is all about balance.  It is crucial to balance real-world experiences with enriching and developmentally appropriate digital experiences. Additionally, it is imperative to maintain a curriculum that develops students' technological literacy and citizenship in an increasingly digital world.