Last Reflection

After taking this course, I feel much differently about technology integration in education. Before taking EDIT 2000, I did not understand the importance or the capabilities that technology has within the field of education. I felt as though my instructor, Justine, was very helpful in my gaining of knowledge about how important technology can be to our future in schools.

 

What surprised me the most were the capabilities that technology gives our teachers and students. From Smartboards to Augmented Reality, there are so many things that need to be incorporated in our classrooms. I firmly believe that the tools of technology that we covered in this course should be a huge part of our future K-12 students, as well as college students’ learning.

 

Learning through technology seems to give kids more of a hands on approach to learning. In turn, students are more likely to be motivated to learn due to the use of technology. Doing the projects and stop animation in this class actually proved this to myself. I happened to enjoy doing these hands on activities in order to make a finished product at the end much more than I do in traditional textbook learning. Technology is our future in education. It is important that we appreciate it and make sure our instructors are well educated in how to incorporate it.

Reflection #9 (IWBs)

            After reading “The Rise of the Interactive Whiteboard in Higher Education”, I was not surprised to see how much the usage of this technology is growing. The article makes a critical point in that these interactive boards bring about a new level of education and provide students with a learning opportunity that regular white boards or chalk boards cannot.

 

SmartBoards can be much more versatile than traditional chalk boards or white boards.

IWBs engage students imagination and encourage collaboration. In my opinion, the level of interacity that these IWBs bring to the table makes them worth their cost. They simply bring a lot more to the table than regular textbook learning. I think the most important issue with using this technology is the capability of the instructor who is using the board. Without a knowledgeable instructor, this board could be useless and be a waste of time and money. We had SmartBoards in several of our classrooms during my senior year in high school. However, I remember very well how every teacher that had one seemed to use it only because their felt obligated to. I can remember no interactive activities using an IWB at all during high school. The teachers that had them only used them to write notes, which could have been done with a dry erase board.

The most intriguing thing to me about IWBs are the possibilities of communication that comes along with them. With connection through the internet, groups can even meet in different countries if they need to. Any notes or audio commentary taken on these boards can be saved. Overall, it is evident that IWBs can be extremely beneficial to classrooms of all kinds. They are definitely a step up from the traditional textbook and chalkboard learning techniques, especially in the areas of communication, students’ imagination, and collaboration. I think it is important that we continue to utilize these in our schools and the users become as knowledgeable as possible in order to utilize the IWBs and extract their maximum capabilities.

 

You can see in this image some of the capabilities that IWBs have that classrooms have not seen before.