Chapter 6 Post

On page 158 of the text, there are very good points of the good and bad things of advanced technologies in the classroom.  One of the positives that it brings up are that even though older technologies work just fine, they are limiting the teachers of all the available resources in the world.  One of the negatives of these advancing technologies is that they are very expensive and take training.  So even if a school district is willing to pay money for the technology, if the teacher does not know how to use it properly, it could hinder the lesson as opposed to help it.  In my opinion, another negative about a lot of technology, is that it takes away from personal interaction: when a classroom is very involved with technology, face to face conversations decrease.  I think I would like to teach in a classroom that has certain emerging technologies such as SMART boards and document cameras because they allow teachers to truly get creative with the lessons; on the other hand, I would want to stray away from classrooms where the students depend on e-books and smart phones because some older traditions, such as using paper books, I value.

Chapter 11 Post

It is important to be able to use different kinds of technology in a classroom for both audio and visual purposes.  For audio projects, I would use the traditional method of the Tape Recorder and the emerging technology of the iPod. With the Tape Recorder, I would be able give oral exams for students and then grade them later, or I could have kids record questions they had from a lesson and turn them in and be able to answer them later to increase the amount of work/teach time.  An iPod would be very useful for using audio because this way I could incorporate songs into the lesson, just to make kids get into it a little bit.  There are speakers I could plug it into to make the music louder.  I could also find the downloadable pod casts from the internet for different lessons and then pass around the iPod to groups of students.  For visual projects, I would use the traditional film projector that is connected to a VCR, which would enable me to show a large group of students a movie with out having to use a small TV screen that would be hard to use.  Additionally, I would use a document camera.  This would have the capability to show the class objects or notes without having to pass something around. If the students were doing show and tell, they could use the document camera to show the class their object if it is small.  All four of these technologies are very useful for multiple facets in a classroom.