Computer Technology in the Classroom

My Experience with Using Technology in the Classroom




I just recently completed an educational program at Georgia State University. This program was for students working to obtain a Master’s of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T) Social Sciences. This December I will be completing the degree in its entirety, but I have already completed the teacher certification portion of this program. The M.A.T. program at Georgia State has allowed me to complete my practicum teaching history classes at the middle and high school level.  I’ve had the opportunity to work with kids from different age ranges. It’s a really neat thing to compare what they know about technology in contrast to what I knew about it when I was in there shoes a couples of years ago. I know that a big difference is that most of the technology around today was not around at the time I was in grade school. From my studies at Georgia State and my hands on experience in the classroom I have been able to use technology in several ways to instruct students. This blog will outline some of the ways I have used technology to teach my students.
My first practicum experience was teaching 8th Grade Georgia History at Harper Archer Middle School in Atlanta Public School System. This school at the time was one of Low Socio-economic status. The resources at this school were not quite up to date. My mentor teacher was still working off of a projector. The standard way of delivering instruction to students was using PowerPoint Presentation. Don’t get me wrong, PowerPoint presentations are an effective way to deliver instruction to students and still have them learn the material. I’ve sat through countless of hours of PowerPoint presentation in my time as a student. But focusing on bettering our students to know about technology and using different types of technology the PowerPoint presentation just does not rank very high on my list. This experience was not all bad. We did have laptop and computer lab days where we attempted to integrate technology the best we could. Some useful techniques I learned were Prezi’s and xtranormal video making. These some of the most creative ways I learned in this experience that I will carry with me when I get my own classroom.
My second practicum experience was teaching 11th Grade U.S. History at Arabia Mountain High School in DeKalb County School System. This school was a little more technology oriented. I loved my experience here and I learned quite a bit about integrating technology into my lesson. For starters, this school had one of the fancy interactive Promethean Boards that replaced the traditional chalk black board. It took me a minute to get acquainted with how to use this type of smart board but once I learned I could not get enough of it. I loved teaching my students from this board. You could touch the board to make it perform commands. The students even enjoyed being taught from the board, and when I gave them opportunities to perform task on the board they were highly engaged. Some technologies I learned to integrate in my lessons while I was at this school included: Webquest, Stratalogica, and USA Test Prep. There were many others but this was just to name a few. Don’t want to give away all of my teaching secrets.
These days technology is only getting better. For the most part technology is advancing and it is only right that kids advance right along with it. Students should become familiar with technology at a young age because they have a greater risk of knowing how to use the technology. Students are in school most of the day receiving instructions so it’s only right that if we want kids to become familiar with technology that we find some way to integrate the use of technology into our teacher lesson plans. This will maximize the students use and exposure to different types of technology, and create new and exciting ways for students to think about school and learning. The bottom line is that the world is forever changing, so it’s only right if we want our students to work harder and be better than the previous generations that we must instruct them in way that promote advancing of our world. Since we live in a technology savvy world we must promote the use of technology in our classrooms.


Posted by Quwan Dukes at 5:25 PM No comments:
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Computer Technology in Early Childhood Education


Today the computer is used for many things in the classroom than it was several years ago. With the world becoming a more technological dependent place, people are encouraged to learn the computer at an earlier age. Since the computer has been introduced into the elementary classrooms it has increased the development of school age children significantly. The computer has impacted children’s social and emotional development, Language development, Physical well-being and motor development, and cognition and general knowledge. In this blog I will further breakdown the different ways that computer technology in early childhood education has impacted our children.
            The first area of development that I want to describe about children benefiting from having computers is social and emotional development. One way computer use in the classroom benefits students is by placing two or more students at a computer and let them interact or cooperate on a program. This will increase the level of spoken communication and self-concept to improve their attitudes about learning. Thus, the responsive interaction provides a sense of well-being that allows certain students to take advantage of the opportunity to form attachments with others and participate positively in educational activities. This to me is the most important aspect of having computer technology in early childhood education classrooms, because it builds a comfort level for the student and they feel at ease when using a computer because they have a feeling for it already.

            The second area of development that I want to describe about children benefiting from the computer in the classroom is language development. Language and literacy is a major part of life, because knowing a lot of words gives you the opportunity to communicate with many people in a variety of ways. Children tend to narrate what they are doing as they draw pictures or move objects and characters around on the screen (Bredekamp & Rosegrant, 1994). The computer enables children to have experiences with written and oral language, and provide children with tools to interact with others, and to represent their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.          

            The third area of development that I want to describe about children benefiting from the computer in the classroom is physical well-being and motor development. Fine and gross motor skills develop at varying rates, and learning to write can be tedious and difficult as children struggle to form letters. A word processor allows them to compose and revise text without being distracted by the fine motor aspects of letter formation (Davis & Shade, 1994). It states that computer use is very beneficial to one’s sense of well-being, but children should not spend so much time on the computer that it will affect their outdoor playing time. If the child does start to neglect the time not on the computer for active activities the child may start to suffer from obesity. This is why in school and out of school computer use time should be limited to keep the child’s body healthy. Shade states that “a child’s health is connected to their performance and preparedness for learning. Healthy children are able to focus on and actively engage in experiences crucial to the learning process.”
             The fourth area of development that I want to describe about children benefiting from the computer in the classroom is cognition and general knowledge. With computers children are able to represent actions that are quite impossible to represent in the real world. They can manipulate variables such as gravity and speed, and discovery the effects. Compared to children in classrooms without computers, children significantly gain greater knowledge of verbal and nonverbal skills, problem solving, abstractions, and conceptual skills (Haugland)[1][1]. These skills if developed at an early age could significantly determine the cognitive processes of a child. That is why I think that today’s children are much smarter than those from past generations, because they are the ones that are exposed to all this new technology. Today’s children are the one’s that get to thoroughly explore the world of computers, and greatly benefit from the many uses of it in the classroom.


Works Cited
Bredekamp, S., & Rosegrant, T. (1994). Learning and teaching with technology. In J. L. Wright & D. D. Shade (Eds.), Young children: Active learners in a technological age (pp. 53-61).
Davis, B. C., & Shade, D. D. (1999). Integrating technology into the early childhood classroom: The case of literacy learning. In D. D. Shade (Ed.), Information technology in childhood education annual. Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Haugland, S. W. (1992). The effect of computer software on preschool children's developmental gains. Journal of Computing in Childhood Education, 3(1), 15-30.
Hyson, M. & Morris, S. (1985). Computers? I love them!: Young children's concepts & attitudes about computers. Early Childhood Development & Care, 23, 17-29.
National Association for the Education of Young Children. March 2006. National Association for the Education of Young Children. September 10, 2007. http://www.naeyc.org/resources/research/