BY FRANKIE VANSICKLE, STAFF WRITER
As an education major, there are so many ways we can teach children/teenagers. As we progress through the years, technology has been an upcoming figure in the education community.
There are specific classes designed for us to learn about different technological ways to use it in kids’ learning. Even though there are classes on it, do we really want to use technology in the classroom, or should it be handled later in life?
Going through elementary school, we barely were able to use technology. The only technological use that we had was a computer lab and that was only maybe once a week. We learned how to type and how to play games that we could learn from, but in reality, we weren’t learning because we just wanted to have fun away from the classroom. To me, it wasn’t learning.
I’ve talked to other people around my age about this, and they had similar experiences where they didn’t learn a thing.
As we all go to middle school and high school, we tend to use more technology than ever before. The boards, laptops, websites were all ways we used technology to get the full experience. We used technology as a cheat sheet to do simple things like typing a paper most of the time. It wasn’t the experience I wanted now looking back.
Personally, I feel like I got left out of what needed to happen. As you get out of school, you are exposed to many forms of technology that you could be used to by the time you are out of school.
They always say that they are trying to prepare us for the real world when, in fact, they don’t at all. Even in college, I had to ask a professor about an excel sheet because I wasn’t taught how to use an excel sheet properly where a lot of companies use these everyday tools.
Looking back, we used to get so many papers. A lot of us felt overwhelmed by the coursework we would get through papers and the homework we would get. They weren’t taught how to use technology to its full extent and the creative ways that they could have gotten to teach us about our creative side with our work. Maybe some people would have been more inspired by their work and be able to get motivated.
I can’t blame them fully for what they weren’t taught when they were going through school. Even in our classes, I feel like we aren’t getting full exposure to how to teach kids using different types of technology. Even though some classes have it, I feel like they are just trying to teach us the content and not give us the full experience.
It needs to be more incorporated into our lives from an early age now to start learning and to be able to be creative. A lot more kids would love this type of learning, it would be student-centered because they’ll be growing up with it now. It makes the most sense.
