Technology

The thing that interest me the most is the fact that this is a growing project. I love how in the next few years almost if not already every college student and some high school students will have the opportunity to take advantage of these online opportunities. I think that the sentence that I thought about the most was “Students completed an online, automatically scored post-test for each unit.” I really have mixed about this statement. One feeling I have is that it is really important for students to have a unit test. On the other hand I feel that having a unit test where students know that it will be “open book” they are not likely to get as much out of the class. I think that in these types of classes the teachers need to challenge their students more so than they would in a normal class room setting.

I think that my main question would be, how would teachers know what technological advice to give their students if they begin to have problems. The only real sense I have of the is do extensive training on the teachers before they can teach the class. Although the students may only have small problems there will always be a few big problems occur.

I can really connect this to my life for the simple fact that I have taken online classes and I have had problems with some of them. The problems I had were not only just with it being confusing but there were technical problems as well. One example would be, I was having problems downloading the required programs so I called the professor and they know kind of what to do and when it got to the point that he didn’t know he just told me to called tech support. As I said I think that online classes can be confusing for the fact that you do not have that one on one interaction to ask your questions.

I understand on technology is growing and that it is important for a classroom but I feel that they have put to much weight on technology in classrooms. I feel that it is important to have some technology but I don’t agree with having no classroom interaction. I feel that especially in high school and junior high it just makes the teachers lazy and not put as much effort into their class. Whereas a teacher that integrates really well is introducing the students to new things as well as using the old school methods that I think are also important.

I think that HWC’s are a good source for personal use but I feel that they are not necessary for academic achievement. With HWC’s this allows students to basically cheat. So many students feel that they can get away with using the internet to easily access their answers. With HWC’s it is just a way for students to eliminate class discuss and use their HWC to communicate.

I think that this is a serious issue to think about and teachers need to use their best judgment on when it is most appropriate to use these methods.