Emerging Technologies in the Classroom

The first set of the emerging technologies I looked at are blogs and wikis. One can think of a blog as a type of personal journal where one can write their own thoughts and feelings on a particular topic, or a random topic depending on how the blog is structured. Other people, who're online and read the blog, can respond, usually with how they feel about that particular person's feelings about their topic. Wikis, on the other hand, are more of a collaborative venture. Anyone who has access to the wiki can go in and edit the information stored on there. Skype is another emerging technology that I looked into. Skype is a computer program in which you can, using a webcam, call someone over the Internet and have a live video conversation with that person. Many of my friends use it to talk with family back home or friends across campus. Some of them use it to work on projects with other people if they somehow cannot meet together in person. The last emerging technology that I looked at was the Smart Board. Essentially, it is a huge projector screen that you hook your computer up to. Once hooked up, you can use a pen, a pointer, or even your finger to manipulate the screen. You can do anything you can normally do on a monitor, with the added ability of a giant touch screen.

I feel these technologies would have a huge impact on my teacher preparation, and once in the field, on my actual teaching. Having these in my educational tool box would be a great boon to me as a teacher! I would be able to set up lessons that utilize each of these different technologies. Skype, blogs, and wikis flourish when used for projects, of which I can whereas the Smart Board is easier to use as an everyday classroom tool. By keeping these technologies in a mental toolbox, I can be sure to use them when I need them and to keep in mind that since they are tools, there is a right time and a wrong time to use them.

These technologies can have a huge impact on the way students learn and demonstrate whether or not they have met objectives for lessons I have taught. Skype is one way student can learn and that is through using it for collaborative projects with another classroom from around the country or the world. Allowing students the use of this technology, something that could be completely foreign to them, will more often than not get them excited for the work they will do. Plus, they will be able to work with someone that may live a different way or have different views of life, which will allow the student to grow as a young person. Wikis can be used to set-up projects, much like our WebQuest on our own wikis. They can be used as formative or summative assessments, depending on the lesson one has prepared and loaded onto the wiki. Blogs, on the other hand, can be used to check and see if students have completed objectives for the lesson one has taught. By having your students post their answers and some thoughts about the lesson, or posing review questions that each student will need to post, a teacher can check for understanding by reading through a student’s own thoughts and posted homework on the student’s blog.