Week 1 Duscussions

In reading both articles I would have to agree that both demonstrated points of interest that I agreed with. Postman’s article was a little more pessimistic in terms of the education and technology relationship. In a lot of the examples it seemed a little out of date and kind of hard to follow because I grew up with technology. A lot of problems that we are facing today as humans are not due to the fact that we operate technology. I believe that by providing technology in the classroom it enhances the educational experience. From personal experience it makes learning more interesting and more self directed with little to no instruction. Without technology neither you nor I would be in this class today. I believe with integrating technology into our lesson plans in a reasonable manner and monitoring allows children more practical realization into real world experience. It allows a child insight to other individual’s viewpoints and ways of doing things without always maintain our cultural bias. With advances today it keeps us up to date and competitive with other cultures. Postman stated that "One of the principal functions of school is to teach children how to behave in groups." In today’s society we are technology driven and I believe that if some form of technology is not integrated into the educational arena we may put some disadvantage students at an even further disadvantage. You cannot assume that even in today’s world everyone has the same access to the same technological devices. I agree with the other article that technology allows us to become more self directed learners at our own speed. I believe in some change to the current system in hand may provide value to the educational setting because not everyone learns the same or at the same speed. I believe that there is a way to integrate technology into a classroom so that a teacher may monitor the student’s progress while maintain stability and control with the self directed learning. I don’t see any person abusing technology to a point it replaces our values as a society pertaining to education.