Eng. 658 – Week 10 Blog 1

The Post-Journal article on education being changed by incorporating technology complements the discourse we have engaged over the past three months. As a substitute teacher, I find the possibilities helpful and exciting. For instance, last week in a math class the students needed to find the square root of a number. Instantly, I remembered our technology discussions and pedagogies surrounding them and asked the students to take out their cell phones (I saw this as a ways to integrated technology into the classroom). I did this to the students’ amazement—as we know they are not allowed and should not take out phones for personal matters in class. After they pulled out their phones, I asked them to navigate to the calculator page, and then I showed them the square root button. Now they had a new use for their phones, and we took the phone out of simply the “phone” instrument category and into a usable school tool. Although the kids were excited, they said I was “cool” because “No teacher ever has us use our phones,” the value of integrating technology into the classroom took the obnoxious cell phone from being a teachers’ enemy to being an aid. However, this does not take away from the phone being a nuisance at times, but the experience showed me the value of being open to bringing technology into the classroom. In fact, I have a class tomorrow that is a tough one, and after reading this article, I’m churning my brain to find a way to bring some form of technology into the classroom to engage the students, to take them out of the box into other realms of learning.