Journal #1

Finding new ways to connect By: Eleanor Yang Su

This article deals with how technology is changing how students function in the classroom. Although technology can add many things to the classroom it can also cause problems. Students tend to multitask more often then they used to which causes more things to get done, but at a lower quality. The article also goes into the positives that can go along with having technology in schools. Teachers have begun to use technology to help students become more engaged. They do this through using technology such as clickers, online experiments and more. Through technology teachers are keeping in better contact with their students. Although it is not face to face interaction more students are communicating with their teachers via the computer. Many schools have set up class websites, campus e-mail and some even instant messengers to help teachers and students stay in contact. This article showed both the negatives and positives to technology being brought into the classroom.

How can you cut down on multitasking in the classroom?
I think the most important way to cut down on student distractions is by engaging the students. Students can lose their concentration very quickly and it is important for a teacher to be able to adapt their teaching to deal with this problem. Lecturing for 10 minutes and then showing pictures, video helps students to keep their focus. I think that interacting with students is also very important. Doing projects such as wikipedia where students are building their own encyclopedia help students to be more engaged with their learning.

Should teachers have to use “bells and whistles” to keep students concentration?
I think that its important for teachers to realize that students today have been brought up in a technology based world and that they need to adapt their teaching style to this. I know some teachers don’t believe that its their job to entertain their students. It is however their job to educate them. If using up to date technology is going to help students learn then I think its important to incorporate that into my classroom. It’s a teachers job to teach the students in a way that they can learn not in the way they prefer.