I am currently conduction my field experience at Norman high school, so I interviewed the language arts teacher. I asked questions about technology in her classroom, and I was shocked by her responses.
The Norman high teacher stated that there are so many people using the servers that its impossible for all of them to work. She indicates that it is incredibly frustrating that the servers are slow or freeze whenever students have to use technology in the classroom, she says that it wastes a lot of time just waiting for the servers to work back up again.
The class is provided with a Smartboard, that she uses daily to keep students on task with their work. The teacher is usually the only one using the Smartboard. Whenever students are working on a research paper, the teacher borrows a cart from the librarian, and then they are provided with Apple notebooks for their papers if the educator allows them to work on their papers in class.
The teacher stated that she tries to minimize the amount of technology she uses in class because there are a lot of problems that come with it, such as, the servers are slow/down, students do not remember their passwords, students are helpless because they are not used to using technology in an academic way. And interestingly, whenever they do use the computers to type their essays, the students do not take the time to fix their errors, when spellchecking signals that the words are wrong. She also states that all of her students are on different levels of technology, so it takes a lot of class time just to get the basics done.
She indicates that it is all staff members job to help students with technology. She says she feels that everyone is just leaving it to the English department. She states that all teachers can help. She concludes her statements by, "students need to be exposed to it in other classes too."
As a future teacher, I believe it is important for the entire school to come together and show students how to use technology academically. Educators should not only leave it to English teachers to fix the problem, but all teachers also need and should expose students to technology in the classroom, it will be a life skill that will be useful for them.
The Norman high teacher stated that there are so many people using the servers that its impossible for all of them to work. She indicates that it is incredibly frustrating that the servers are slow or freeze whenever students have to use technology in the classroom, she says that it wastes a lot of time just waiting for the servers to work back up again.
The class is provided with a Smartboard, that she uses daily to keep students on task with their work. The teacher is usually the only one using the Smartboard. Whenever students are working on a research paper, the teacher borrows a cart from the librarian, and then they are provided with Apple notebooks for their papers if the educator allows them to work on their papers in class.
The teacher stated that she tries to minimize the amount of technology she uses in class because there are a lot of problems that come with it, such as, the servers are slow/down, students do not remember their passwords, students are helpless because they are not used to using technology in an academic way. And interestingly, whenever they do use the computers to type their essays, the students do not take the time to fix their errors, when spellchecking signals that the words are wrong. She also states that all of her students are on different levels of technology, so it takes a lot of class time just to get the basics done.
She indicates that it is all staff members job to help students with technology. She says she feels that everyone is just leaving it to the English department. She states that all teachers can help. She concludes her statements by, "students need to be exposed to it in other classes too."
As a future teacher, I believe it is important for the entire school to come together and show students how to use technology academically. Educators should not only leave it to English teachers to fix the problem, but all teachers also need and should expose students to technology in the classroom, it will be a life skill that will be useful for them.