Why might it be important for students to learn with technology?

When I first came to school to become a teacher I was of the opinion that technology in the classroom was a waste of money and time. I don’t really remember why I thought this way but I guess I thought that the only way that a teacher could use technology in the classroom was in a science class. I probably though this because I had teachers that felt this way and so therefore never got a chance to experience how students can us technology in the classroom everyday. But after take this class for three weeks, and it only took three weeks I’ve become excited about using technology and think we should use it whenever we can. Because in today’s modern world students can learn faster and absorb information better through the use of technology, if this is working for kids, then why go back to the past? Just like the laptop computers for kids, although I don’t necessarily agree about having laptops, I think that at least every desk in the school should have a computer. This way, teachers can really use technology in the classrooms. Besides this I think that teachers should use things like wiki’s and Google earth as much as they can just to get their kids interested and excited about the material. Because as everyone knows, if we are excited about material then we as individuals will always not only enjoy learning the material, but we will be able to learn and understand that material at a higher understanding. If technology can help us teacher in our line of work then it is important that we go all out and really integrate the classrooms. However, we cant go to far, by saying we should integrate the entire class room into the technology world we should not replace the teacher. Now, I’m not just saying this because I would be out of a job, but because I don’t think that we can replace the human aspect of learning completely, we should use technology as a tool, not to completely teach our children. Lastly there is one thing that I would love to add to this and that is about Blogging. I love the blog aspect of technology because I think it is an easy way for student to hand in work. This also allows students to save money and to not have to go through the hassle of using all that paper. Doing this will help our students become better organized because they don’t have to deal with all that paper; but, most importantly blogging and the use of wiki’s could eliminate the use of all paper in schools saving millions of dollars in the schools systems. This could then be put towards books or more after school activities. The only thing that can come from using and integrating more and more technology is good things, and I’m very excited to be one of the first generation to go out to the schools and start the revolution. A s for this stuff, by the end of the course I would really like to be able to have a class discussion on how using blogs and wikis could improve the classroom, I know we’ve done one but I wish we could go deeper into the topic. I would also like to maybe have our class sit down and teach people from mount Blue about the use of blogs and wikis and maybe try to get them to be the first school to adopt this idea and really embrace it.