Technology And Education: Putting Chromebooks In The Classroom

Technology and Education A YouTube video flashes onto the board from a projector. A bright blue light bathes the walls of a dimly lit classroom. Heads nod as students take this opportunity to sleep, and yet, some use it as an opportunity to learn. Technology has radically changed the way teachers and administrators structure classes, but has that change been for the better? School boards have been advocating and pushing for more technology in classrooms, yet consistently buy technology that goes into storage 2 years later for being outdated. At the same time, science classrooms have come alive, as information leaps out of bland chemistry textbooks into interactive applications. Where and how do we find a balance? Clearly, how we use …show more content…
Technology is only as effective as the classroom it is placed in. Putting Chromebooks into a class of disheartened students with ineffective teacher will not change anything, nor does using Google to find information only to place it into a PowerPoint. “A student in Durham using an iPad to google her way to Wikipedia...is learning no more than did a student twenty-five years ago who used an encyclopedia to find the same information” (Bartos 13). Part of the problem here is that there are simply so many options that teachers are hard pressed to find something they can use to help teach their students, and it becomes especially difficult when Administrators are consistently pushing for higher technology usage without taking into account how it can be difficult to integrate electronics into a classroom that might not need it. Anne Bucci, the Media Coordinator at David W. Butler High School, is well aware of these issues. In relation to technology in the classroom, Mrs. Bucci stresses that the use of technology must relate to the content. “Teachers should think with the end in mind.” She says. “What do I want my students to gain from this activity? The key part is finding the course objective and matching it with…the appropriate tech tool.” (Bucci) The former, finding the course objective, is easy. Matching it with the appropriate tech tool is …show more content…
The idea is simple but the application is revolutionary. The service provides a classroom, or a “Stream” as Google calls it (Janzen). Teachers post assignments onto the Stream, and students are able to complete these assignments using Google’s web based office applications, such as Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Spreadsheets. Instead of finding an article online, printing the article, and having students write response to the article to turn it in by hand, it becomes much more efficient to simply digitally send the students the article and have them respond in Google Docs. Teachers also have access to a wealth of handy features and add-ons that make things easier for them. For example, they can set a certain date and time that an assignment must be turned in, so that students cannot simply skip class in order to avoid turning in an assignment. All the assignments are listed online, so that there is no issue of “I forgot the assignment” or “I didn’t know what to do”. Teachers are also able to comment on student’s individual assignments to grade their work and compare what students turned in and when they turned it in. Students benefit from this system to. Notification appear on the side to tell students when assignments are due, a warning appears when the assignment is due the next day, and a red exclamation point is placed on the assignment when it is late. Students can