Backup Education

            After reading Marc Prensky’s article “Backup Education,” I am most defiantly left with mixed feelings. On the one hand I think I have to agree that education should reflect the changing times and maybe head in the direction of a technology centered future. However, I also feel that sometimes technology can be use a crutch and depended on more then it is needed.

In my short career I have tried to harness all the technology I can to provide my classroom with spontaneity, enthusiasm and an equal playing ground for all the learning diversities that may be present. Whenever is being studied in that classroom or any question a student may have or present can be been accessed through the Internet.  Why just explain and lecture when you can show.  It has also been my finding that students perform to their best ability when they are intrinsically motivated.  When students are excited about a lesson, assignment or project, the sky is the limit. Technology can provide that excitement through, creating wiki’s, blogs, podcasts, or video’s.  I also believe that technology can be as important as a pair of glasses or hearing aide for some students with special needs.  By students utilizing programs like Kurzwell or Dragon they able to read and write at pair even when their abilities may be well below grade level.

            Each year I hear the same arguments from the students in my class.  “Why can’t we use our calculator for the first unit?”  Well I think that mental math is an important. I feel that students in my grade 8 class should know there times tables to at least 12 and be able to recite these when asked to.  I think that it’s faster to think of it off the top of your head then compute it into a calculator when the times table has been committed to memory.  Science shows us that the human brain builds new axons and dendrites when it has been stimulated.   Science also shows us that some technologies actually put the brain to sleep.  I think that in the classroom we need to stimulate the brain as much as possible and challenge our students with and without technology.

            It is my belief that we should educate students to harness technology but to learn to use it when it is best.  Will technology fail us?  Maybe sometimes but there will always be a back up.