Introduction
In the effort to understand the integration of technology in education, researchers have been debating on its practical methods, advantages and disadvantage for a long time. Some have developed papers based on hand-on data in classrooms. Some have argued that technology itself is not capable of delivering moral qualities, and evolving ethical issues should be added to the technology education. Others, however, have argued potential concerns when integrating technology in education, such as the filtering system of schools’ internet. This literature review will discuss some of the latest published articles in the field of technology integration in education, including …show more content…
The article “On Our Minds: Meaningful Technology Integration in Early Learning Environments” (2008) has showed Ms. Evan and Ms. Green’s teaching experiences with the assistance of technology. They have been teaching 28 children aging from 4 to 5 for two years while integrating technologies in their classroom. By promoting and documenting children’s learning, the videos have allowed researchers to investigate the impact of four technologies in the early education of bones, fossils, and dinosaurs. In addition to digital cameras and document cameras, there were also digital microscope, Internet, and interactive whiteboard facilitating the technology integration. To be concrete, children could not only take digital photos to document their learning interests, but also be assessed their understanding of certain concepts by their photos. Magnifying glasses, digital microscopes, and child-friendly document cameras could be reached through multiple perspectives, developing children’s spatial awareness (Figure 1). Since Ms. Evan and Ms. Green have utilized project-based emergent curriculum, these children were able to actively develop independent questions and engage in teamwork, which in return helped promote their relationship building with others in the …show more content…
Evan and Ms. Green’s classroom, however, in order to protect children, an Internet filtering system for K-12 children in school was introduced in the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). CIPA, as stated in Meeder’s article “Internet filtering software in K-12 classrooms” (2005), has set the rules for schools to filter contents like pornography and hate groups from libraries’ and schools’ computers. However, there were debates around the filtering system due to its lack of diversity.
As stated by Meeder, the filtering system can not only prevent K-12 students from seeing inappropriate content, but also some clean sites that “discuss controversial, though relevant, topics in an appropriate manner.” Image a student is working on a school project related to sexually transmitted diseases, but many websites containing keywords like “sex” or “drugs” are filtered—How could this student continue the project without enough resources? According to Meeder (2005), some educators argued that schools might have teachers select a variety of websites for children to ensure the diversity of perspectives to display on the internal network. Nevertheless, others believed that educators should help students learn to distinguish the good from the bad, since it was how technology was used that mattered (Meeder,