This article about technologies in education was very insightful. First of all one of the technologies I see myself using in the future would be adaptive learning. Since I want to be a special education teacher I will be constantly looking at other way to help my students learn. Since they can't learn the traditional ways always, using something like adaptive learning may be very helpful. With adaptive learning quizzes and tests are given based off the students knowledge and skills. I really think that could be beneficial for my students. Another technology I see becoming very helpful would be gaming. Gaming could be a really awesome way to get students and special education students more interested in what they are learning. I also know that sometimes it helps when sped students are doing more interactive things. So educational games done the right way may really help my students practice skills such as math facts or verbs. I do realize now all students would be able to use this, but a vast majority could. There are just so many different technologies coming out and I can only imagine what will be out when I actually start teaching!
After I read the article I went and read all of the different comments. A vast majority of people thought the article was great and were very positive about technology in education. But, there also was a few people who saw technology as not such a great tool. I can see were the people who are more against it are coming from. However, I also wonder how many of them are actual educators. For all we know they may be accountants or doctors. I personally believe that technology can be used to help the kids that without technology are hard to connect with. I do think we need to watch how much technology is used, but if done right it can be an asset.
I think how we use technology in the classroom is very important. Quality, not quantity. That's a great point about the comments...they really could be anyone. There are so many new adaptive devices I've seen for just kids with communication disorders, I can't imagine how many others are out there! It will be exciting to see what else they (we?) come up with.
ReplyDeleteI also think gaming is a great way to get students more interested in learning. Games help keep kids engaged and active in learning!
ReplyDeleteI think that gaming is going to be large part of using technology in education, especially for elementary and maybe even middle school students. I think that the main difficulty is going to be developing games that are interesting to students while still being a learning experience. Also, finding games that are specific to your lesson plan may be difficult for certain history or science lessons.
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned how technology can be used to advance interactive learning in the classroom for special education students. This is something Kristin mentioned about "activating" all of the senses. I think the two of you are onto something in this regard. I hadn't thought about the bias of the comments on the blog before reading your post and it is an interesting thing to consider. I agree with the pro-technology people, and if it is used in the right way in the classroom it can really help the learning community.
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