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.