Listen to the Natives

• In your opinion, what technology tools should we be teaching students
  today?

  What expectations should we have of students and what should be done
  to help students meet those expectations?

  Were your schools stuck in the 20th century?

  What was most compelling about the article?

I think that we should be teaching as much technology as possible to students today. Technology is the future. It's true that younger generations are much better with technology and most likely they will be doing some of the teaching in classrooms. I believe that this is a good strategy though because this ensures that everyone will be learning, including the teacher sometimes. Students today are raised with their lives revolving around technology and in many cases, helps make learning easier.

We should expect students to participate in class discussions and activities. More use of technology also means that there is more opportunity for students to cheat. This could be done using cell phones during tests for example. I think we have to trust the students to be honest and to be responsible for their own education. Students should also be able to ask each other for help because some people are better with technology than others.

My school was stuck in the 20th century. We had computers and few other technology resources available but access was limited. For example, we weren't allowed to check email during school hours and websites like myspace, facebook and youtube were completely blocked. When doing research, it was often difficult to find information because the school had set up so many filters to block unwanted websites. I was doing a research project on anorexia and had a lot of difficulty finding pictures. All the sites were blocked for profanity, nudity, violence, etc. It was really hard to work on projects at school and the teachers didn't seem to understand the problem with it.

What I thought was most compelling was that teachers are starting to incorporate more technology into their lesson plans. Most teachers where I'm from tried to avoid technology and weren't open to new methods. This is a nice change to see. I also liked that some teachers aren't afraid to let students teach them new things about technology.