Chapter 12

I can relate to learning outcome 12.1 because I have found myself to be one of those teachers who is reluctant to incorporate technology into my lesson plans. One of the main reasons being because I am not comfortable with my ability to use it properly. The other day while teaching a 4th grade math lesson I needed to move the smart board page up to refer back to something I had written down earlier on in the lesson. I could not figure out how to even move the paper up and one my students need to come up and assist me. To me, that is super embarrassing and I would have much rather not used the Smart Board at all.

Another thing I found interesting within this chapter was that technology should not be used as a reward or punishment for students. I had always experienced technology throughout my schooling to be something we were given only if we earned it. It was never just part of our daily routines. The teacher would also take away a promised technology based lesson if we misbehaved. That is definitely not the outlook you want your students to have on technology use in the classroom.

Last week during my student teaching the Smart Board stopped working and refused to turn on. My cooperating teacher told me she refused to call the technology help because they were unable to help her with an issue the last time and she did not want to let the school know because they would upset. She tried to work on fixing the issue herself and in the meantime felt completed at lost on how to make her lesson work without it. They had no other place in their room to use to write things down. Eventually she was able to fix the smart board on her own but so much educational time was wasted. That is one of my biggest fears with using technology in the classroom because eventually you become to reliant on it that once it stops working you would not know how to continue.