Module+4

This week we read about Teaching, Learning and the Curriculum in Chapter 3. In this chapter it discussed teaching in this new technology/digital age and what hat entailed. This week's module was focused on 21st Century teaching and what that meant. This module and chapter this week illustrated the shift in education towards the implementation of technology use everyday as opposed to once in a while. I learned that the technology standards that are out there were adopted into my state's requirements in order to better pepare out students to not only be successful learners in the 21st century, but also to be successful in life in the 21st century.
 * __Description__**

The readings this week made me take a second look at the dusty technology standards book that I have in my classroom. In my school there has been such a push to increase reading and math scores that unfortuntately other subjects were pushed to the side, especially technolgy. We have million exuses in our school as to why implementing technology is not as important as other subjects, but after this week's readings I am convinced that we need to take technology more seriously.We have increased test scores in reading in math with the bare minimum and our kids are still improving, but our funding and resources have not. We do have technology in our school, and even though we have the bare minimum and limited resources, we need to make it work. As teachers it is our duty to prepare our students for the future, that isn't just reading and writing anymore. If our students do not leave our school know how to use basic technology, then we have failed them. We have let them down just as much as we would if we decided math or reading wasn't that important.
 * __Impact__**

I am sitting here contemplating what my "intent" with this new knowledge of the importance of implemnting technology, and I am thinking about a comment a classmate of mine made in a post: "we need to work technology around the content, not the content around the technology. I have been so focused and worried about how I was going to teach using new technology ideas, that I began thinking in reverse. I am now looking at technoloigy as a way to enhance what I am teaching instead. I also am not afraid to let my students be the teachers and I am just the facilitator in my classroom. They have the gadgets and many times more knowledge than I do. I need to give them the basic ideas and they can run with them using their own knowledge and skills, I need to just provide them with the platform upon which to build those skills. I also intend on allowing my students to not only teach me, but also their classmates. In the 21st Century it is going to be of great importance that our kids learn to learn and collaborate with each other.
 * __Intent__**