Week One Reflection CI 5351

I look around the halls of my school and realize how technology has taken over the old. iPods have replaced walkmans, text messaging has replaced passing notes, flash drives have replaced floppy disks and smart boards have replaced overheads. I myself am hungry for the new technological advances and ways to incorporate them into my Language Arts curriculum. With this observation in mind, I think of our school and how it is meeting the needs of our students. We offer them ways to solve mathematical equations, explore the anatomy of a frog, re-create acts from Shakespeare, learn how to speak in a different languages and how to play paddleball, but do we use media to help us with these activities?
In my school’s Language Arts curriculum, it does not address the issues of technology beyond what the state of Minnesota requires. We are not forced to incorporate technology into our lessons or use technology as a learning tool. We offer a business course that focuses on media and technology but we, as teachers, do not build upon the skills they have learned from that course in our own classrooms. It is apparent that my students are hungry for technology- they thrive on seeing persuasion used in the media rather than just talking about it. When they can relate it to their everyday lives, they have a better grasp on it. When I pull clips from TV shows and movies to explain their weekly vocabulary, they have more interest and fun with it.
Our school needs to go beyond showing the movie of the book or event in history after they have read/learned about it and be more creative with the use of media in the classroom. In my opinion, movies have great value if used correctly, but from what I have seen, they are used to allow the teacher to “catch up” or a day off from teaching.