Teaching with Technology

I have started a new course entitled Teaching with Technology. I am enjoying the course already and it's just the 1st week. I have read some really great articles from "If I am teaching this way, am I doing my job?" to "Social Networking Technologies in Education". Many of the readings gave thoughtful questions on the  education sector and its relationship now with technology to its potential relationship in the future. Of all the articles and readings that were covered for this week, I truly identified with this quote most of all from Thomas Friedman. 

Josh Haner/The New York Times

“In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we      

            educate them.”                                                                 

(Friedman, 2005, p. 302)

This quote from the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer winning author Thomas Friedman speaks about how the all-powerful West is slowly disappearing due to the technological revolution. With new gains in technology it is quickly changing the dynamics of how the world operates and it’s a global change in all facets of the everyday mechanics of life. Businesses are embracing this new change because it means being more efficient and with efficiency comes more revenue. This could pose a problem because this allows for outsourcing of jobs in other countries leaving the United States in a bind. So the quote that Friedman speaks of holds great weight.
 We have to educate the children in the states to be highly competitive in the realm of technological change and teach them how to use these tools efficiently so, that they can make great contributions to the world as well as provide a source of income for themselves later on in the future that seems to be changing more and more every day. We have to seriously think about how are we teaching these students and how will it prepare them in the future. Being a teacher myself we have been programmed to think that students will only learn if we tell them what they need to learn and test whether that information has been taught through countless standardized assessments. Yes, standardized assessments are quick but, it doesn't truly show what the students knows and it doesn't show how that student will use that information to solve pertinent problems.
 "We" the teachers need to learn that students learn by doing, creating and sharing their findings in a structured manner. "We" the teachers need to learn to give up our role of being in control to being a facilitator in our classroom. We have to give up the traditional role of teaching, standing and lecturing while students are quietly taking notes to a classroom that is vibrant with enriched-thought provoking questions and answering of students collaborating with each other to create a end product that is an reflection of their learning. 

We want to avoid doing this by all means if we want the students to have chance to be part of the future of technological change.

 While in the process not to resort to this means of teaching.

But to encourage innovative learning with the use of technology to enhance the learning goals to promote critical thinking skills as well as collaborative learning.

Here is a video by Deb Combs on what Educators should inspire to be and do in the education sector.