As a substitute teacher I get to see students at their worst, usually. Some are model students always, but even 4.0 pupils have a penchant to slack off a little when a sub is in the room instead of their regular teacher. This aspect of slacking off grows even more exponentially when you throw technology into the mix.
I have seen how technology can be a negative force in education. Hell, my laptop screen hardly ever on task items on the screen when I was in classes in college. So how can we expect the children of a quickly changing and ever-present technological age to be paying attention in class for more than a brief stretch of time?
Personally after watching the videos detailed in the first week of my EDUC 407 class I have come to believe that we can't. I think we have to grow as teachers to include technology into the way information is disseminated to students. If not, why would a student not long to get back to the newest thing on their phone, tablet, or even school-provided Chromebook.
Videos, interactive websites, and other technology-based facets of learning are becoming more and more present in a classroom. The difference between when I become a full-fledged teacher (I'll be 27 going on 28) and when I graduated high school will be 10 years. And in that 10 years the difference between the amount of technology and a the expectation of a student to use tech-based outlets for their projects and even daily homework is jaw-dropping.
As I go into teaching history, hopefully the valuable information of our past dives into the minds of students even if it is presented in a modern way. Even the way we view history is changing thanks to new technology in the fields of forensics and archaeology (Hitler didn't die in the bunker). So I think teachers, especially new ones, have to realize that how we teach students is going to be ever changing.
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