Course Reflection

I began this class as a recent College graduate, wondering if this was the correct Career path for me.  I believe that it’s an intriguing, important profession in which people could get much fulfillment when results are yielded by their students.  As a Social Studies teacher, I would gladly utilize these course objectives, along with those from other classes, in order to better educate my students and be sure that they are achieving learning through their own Reflections. I’ve already discussed the course objectives, written in my Midterm Reflection, but I believe that each of the course objectives was discussed in more detail in the past few weeks. I’ve learned that it’s critical to integrate technology into the classroom because upcoming students are Digital Natives, even more so than myself. I grew up during the late 1990’s and 2000’s, when technology was getting more and more advanced.  Today, there are children who can utilize even more technology than their counterparts of the past decades.  Technology is necessary in order to better educate the students of the future because it’s not going anywhere, it’s going to remain and become much more important than currently is.

 It’s important for all teachers to integrate technology within the lessons they teach, regardless of the age of the students, because technology is usable by people of every age in the 21^st century.  Given time, people have the ability to learn how to use various technologies for different tasks in their lives.  Technology within lessons gives children the ability to learn more skills, which can be applied to both their school and home tasks. For example, utilizing a WebQuest Web 2.0 tool could greatly affect the learning done by the students.  Depending on the source, it is relatively easy to use by people of numerous ages.  For Digital Natives especially, this a great method for them to learn and apply their knowledge through something other than Research Papers, Testing, etc. because it allows the students to create something of their own, which is conducive for learning at both the home and at the school. Unfortunately, technology has the potential of being expensive, which could affect whether or not a School System decides to implement said technology into their classrooms.  However, various companies and organizations offer grants to both School Systems and teachers, who are able to get various forms of technology into their classroom for little to no money; which is great for both the students and teachers, who are able to use it for their work, both at home and at school.  In my opinion, another barrier to utilizing technology may be the teachers themselves.  Some teachers, be they younger or older, dislike technology and would rather teach their students by utilizing other forms of teaching.  Currently, it is mandatory in some School Systems to integrate technology within the Classroom and Curriculum; hopefully this trend continues into the future because it would alleviate the desires of the teachers who don’t wish to integrate technology.