Technology Blog: Week 1

I am 23 years old and feel very grateful to be afforded the opportunity to be living in this day and age.  Technology is constantly changing and we are at its forefront.  I’m sure most of us can remember the elementary schools days of having our parents and teachers push us to take beginner typing instruction or having to read out loud paragraphs from a heavy hardcover history book.   My mother and father both worked office jobs so I picked up the simplicities of a computer at a young age.  I never really was too far advanced but I was defiantly able to get by with using the different Microsoft Office programs.  Now however, we live in a completely different world.  Today’s world is filled with virtual technology, social networking, texting, twittering, e-mail, blogging and many others commodities.

The beauty of all this new technology is to have it channeled for positive and productive purposes.  Using such tools to create a learning project much like the one Karen Elini did with her 9th grade English students.  "Friends and Flags is a collaborative learning project that promotes multicultural awareness by connecting classrooms around the world in international learning teams made up of two to six countries" says Eini.  This is a prime example of using the social networks of today to link students from all over the world.  They are now able to interact and discuss different points of view from other students who come from completely different social, religious and economic backgrounds.  Susan M. Allen and Karen M. Dutt-Doner discuss the benefits of today’s modern digital and interactive libraries.  "Classrooms now have access to millions of digitized documents.  Students have the opportunity to use these documents as historians and scholars do: analyzing and evaluation information; interpreting snapshots of a given person, place or event; and synthesizing their findings".  This is huge for the creative mind of the learner.  Now the student is given the ability to explore and discover his or her own interpretation of their research. 

            In conclusion to my first blog, I am very excited to learn and explore the ways of using today’s technology for positive and productive reasons.  Like what was said in the video “Learning to Change- Changing to Learn” it is very important that we understand that the world moves forward and the right steps must be taken to bring that technology into our classroom’s.  I am very excited in taking the right steps forward and using our technology productively.