My understanding on educational technology and its relationship with teaching and learning process.
The definition of educational technology is any media that can be used in instruction. My understanding of educational technology lies in what I’ve learned this year as a teacher, and what I read in Chapter One of our book. Reading the book was very inspiring in that it gave me a lot of wonderful ideas of ways to teach my students. In the classroom, I use a Promethean board to illustrate things that I talk to the students about. If I do a lesson on collective nouns, for example, I generally have a Promethean board lesson to accompany my lecture. This is similar to what a PowerPoint presentation would be, except the board displays more functions and there are more teaching options, such as being able to draw on the board or have the students draw or write answers on the board while I’m teaching. This board shows lessons from a website called Promethean Planet, which I access from my laptop in my classroom. The Promethean board is hooked up to my laptop, thus whatever I pull up on my computer, the students are able to see and use, even if it’s pictures or activities off of the internet. This is just a fraction of what I understand educational technology to be. More traditional types of educational media include writing on the chalkboard or using textbooks for learning.
I believe that the relationship between educational technology and teaching lies directly in the fact that students learn differently. Have many types of media at your disposal only increases the chance that each type of learning style will be covered. For example, if Susie has trouble taking notes, but is a great auditory learner, the teacher might put notes on the board and also play an audio CD of the lesson in a fun type of format. Children’s interests are also varied, and one type of media may be boring to one student, yet interesting or fascinating to another. The internet, for example, is something that most students nowadays are very interested in. However, it seems that there’s always going to be that one, two, or three students that either aren’t into it or don’t understand it. These students need an alternative in order to feel both included and fulfilled. What educators must do is have a total understanding of each student. This includes their perceived learning styles, their interests, and their educational levels. Only then can we properly utilize the educational technologies that we are afforded as teachers.
One final point on the learning process that I’d like to make is that learning is a process, and I believe that technology is a perfect way to compliment and grow that process. Technology can be very simple to use, and it can be very difficult to use. This all depends on the students ability to understand technology, but it also depends on how complicated the media that we are using is. A book is a very simple form, but computers are a bit more complicated. As students’ learning processes grow, so can the level of difficulty of the media we teach them with grow. A perfect compliment.
Blog Reflection Week Ten (Website)
14 years ago
