Blog Entry 2: Emerging Technology that Supports Content Learning

As I read about the three categories of knowledge, I was forced to ask myself if I go beyond declarative knowledge with my students. I found my answer to be that I do that a lot of the time, but not all of the time. If I can’t get students to go beyond rote memorization, what is the point of the lesson?
I also focused my thoughts on the setup of technology in my room. I have a one-computer classroom. While the computer is accessible to the students and there is plenty of room for multiple students to sit around it, I often find that I “dump” items there when I need a quick place to put them. So, oftentimes, the computer desk has piles of books, papers, etc. I need to be more cognizant of this.
While I appreciate that this chapter emphasizes that we teachers need to consider all the technological resources that we should have available to us for effective teaching, it does seem that the matter of teachers actually knowing what to do with said equipment should be addressed. At my school, we have all kinds of cool gadgets that are collecting dust because no one knows how to use them.
I’m glad this chapter addressed plagiarism. While I agree that assigning essential questions rather than fact-gather assignments would be better, I still think plagiarism will be a problem. There has to be a better way.
By far, the most important piece for me were the “Guidelines for Supporting Technology-Enhanced Student Content Learning.” (1) Use Just-in-time learning (JIT) to plan lessons. (2) Differentiate instruction—a hard thing to do, but technology can level the playing field. (3) Ensure that teaching is culturally relevant. Tap into the students’ interests, cultures, holidays, etc. (4) Make materials accessible for each child. (5) Balance the subject material with the tools to be used. I think this is the most important guideline. There has to be a happy medium between technology and content. Sometimes technology is not the best idea for every little thing.