Mathematics and Technology

            Technology is a very important aspect of the math classroom.  Many students find math to be boring.  I think technology can help break up the lesson to make it less boring.  Smart boards are a great way to make a lesson more interesting because you can watch tutorials, do problems, save your work like a document and much more.  Kids today are addicted technology.  They would much rather search something on a tablet than in a book.  When I was at East Orange for my fieldwork on Friday, the teacher used his smart board a lot.  First he showed a tutorial on dividing fractions.  After this he proceeded to have individuals come up to the board to solve problems.  Needless to say all of the students wanted to come up to solve a problem which is great.  I loved seeing all of the students wanting to participate.    

            I like the smart boards, but I really wish schools would not replace their white and black boards with smart ones because it makes it much harder for students to have an opportunity to use it.  It is almost as if smart boards are designed to eliminate student involvement.  It seems to put all of the responsibility on the teacher.  I think to create a productive environment for learning the responsibility needs to be put on both the teacher and student.  Another flaw with a smart board is they are technology which does not always work the way you want it to.  If you only have a smart board and it is not working then it makes the teacher’s job much more difficult because it will be difficult to communicate what you mean.    

            Calculators are an extremely important piece of technology to the teaching of mathematics.  This is a tricky piece of technology to integrate into the curriculum because you not want the students to have technology that will give them the answers.  As educators, we want the technology to help the students learn.  I am on the side of the argument that says calculators should be allowed.  For algebra II and higher a calculator is an important and useful tool which can help show graphs of equations, minimum, and maximum points of certain equations.  The problem is for certain problems the calculator can give you the answer and if students know how to get the answer they may not bother to learn how to solve the problem.  This is a problem because students need to learn how to think critically and reason. 

Overall I think technology in the classroom is a great thing to have because it really changes the pace.  Watching videos can help slow the pace and present information in a different way.  Calculators can help the students get the answers quicker, which would understandably make the class run smoother.  At the end of the day I believe technology can add more to teaching and learning than it takes away from it.  It is really important to keep up with the times.         

Technology Autobiography

            The three most important pieces of communication technology in my life are my smart phone, social networking sites, and email.  It is amazing how these pieces of technology can make your life easier.  I could not even imagine life without my iPhone now that I have one.  It literally can do anything I need it to.  I can pay my credit card bill, manage my bank accounts, get my email, check my calendar, or watch a sports game on my phone.  If I told someone twenty five years ago that I could do all of this on my phone they would look at me like I was crazy.  Technology can often make our lives a lot easier because it gives us access to everything we need much quicker.  I can pretty much contact anyone I need to at any time.  My iPhone allows me to call, text message, email, use social networking sites, or I could even video chat people.  This means I can see someone who may be 1000 miles away from me.  A great example of this is when I was able to see one of my cousins get married over video chat because I was not able to make it due to work.  Social networking sites are great because they allow you to stay in contact with people that you may not talk to very often.  For example, last semester I could not remember what section our modern algebra quiz was going to be on the next day.  I decided to message a classmate on Facebook that I did not communicate with on a daily basis because I could not contact any of my friends that I usually call or text.  Email was my third most important piece of technology because this is how I contact my professors and the third way I contact my classmates.  Most of my classes rely heavily on email communication.  I also get email reminders about when I am working.  It would be so much harder for my boss to send everyone their work assignments for that week.  Email is another way of just making life easier. 

Technology is great, but there also drawbacks to all of this development in it.  I feel that technology makes people lazier.  While I was doing this assignment I received a text message from my girlfriend who is in another room about twenty steps away from me.  I think we are all guilty of doing this.  In addition to making people lazy I think all of this technology speeds up life.  Like I said earlier it gives us access to everything we need much quicker.  This can be good sometimes, but sometimes it is good to take a step back and think about things.  When we do things so fast all the time we are acting more like robots than human beings.  We are hindering our thinking and reasoning skills.

My iPhone has definitely impacted the ways I learn new material.  Before my iPhone I would learn the majority of new information from books or the internet if it was available to me.  Today when I have a question about something I learned in math I will automatically Google search the topic and look at the examples.  When I took French I would use my translator app to help translate specific words and sentences.  Before the iPhone I would have to use a French to English dictionary to translate.  Technology is almost all internet based so now most of my learning comes from the internet rather than books.  Using the internet for learning can be a very good thing because you need to decide what information is valid and what may be stretching the truth a little bit.  This allows you to critically think whereas the book is always right. 

The similarities of my technologies compared to the kids in the video are that we all agree it would be very difficult to survive without them.  I also completely agree with the one student who said his technology is an extension of himself.  I think today our devices really are part of who we are because of the way we use them.  We can show personality and creativity through our technology.  I disagree with the one girl that said she does not like how people shorten words when messaging each other.  Technology is meant to make life easier.  In no way does that make her seem like a computer.  She needs to understand what the technology is there for.