Thursday, November 8, 2012

Why technology can enhance our learning.

     Technology is an essential part of our learning now, and in the future. Sure, there are some limitations and negatives, but the vast opportunities that new technology offers is far too valuable to be rejected because of some small problems. But technology should NOT be a replacement to traditional teaching methods. One example is handwriting because physically writing activates parts of your brain that are very important to creativity and mental health.
     That can be a problem because the tendency is to replace traditional methods with new technology. But that can be easily solved with some cooperation and education. Another problem is that technology offers many distractions. But let's face it, technology is an inseparable part of our growing world and will be in someway involved in our daily living for the rest of our lives. So all of us just need to learn to control our temptations, and what better place to learn than school? It's a nurturing environment with a lot lower risk than possibly failing once you get into the job force, which you can no longer afford to do.
     Technology offers routes of learning for people with all different learning styles and brand new methods to learn previously difficult concepts. Something that I have found absolutely indispensable to my learning in my old school is Google Apps for Education. It presented so many new opportunities, like an collaborative online word processor, a group contact list, and cloud storage of multiple media types. Cloud storage with Google Drive was absolutely revolutionary because it gave an easy solution to the problem of accessing your files when using multiple computers. That's a particularly rampant problem with students. The problem of "I forgot it on my home computer" is totally eliminated. The collaborative online word processor allows multiple people to easily edit the same document simultaneously from anywhere in the world. You can even leave notes and have real time chats with other collaborators within the same window. And that's just the beginning! There are so many technologies that are not yet being fully utilized or haven't even be invented yet. The possibilities are endless.

1 comment:

  1. Great job, Madison! I would like to hear more about what your school did with Google Apps for Education in person. This blog shows me that you spent considerable time creating the site as well as the post!
    Mrs. Townsend

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