Response to Perspectives of the 21st Century Student - Higher Ed and K-12

After viewing both perspectives of the 21st Century student, my perspective on changing technology in the classroom has become much more developed. It has become more apparent to me how important bringing new technology into the classroom is for my future students, having it brought to my attention how much time children these days spend watching TV, playing video games, surfing the net, talking on cellphones, texting, instant messaging, and so on. In order to accommodate for these changes, I would like to utilize different online teaching resources to help in teaching certain lessons. For example, I was recently introduced to a website that was very effective in teaching the vertex form of equations. I feel that this would have been helpful for me in learning this topic when I was in high school, whereas my teacher had to keep drawing the translate graphs. On this website, the graph was constantly changing as the values for a, h, and c were changed. In order to be able to utilize some of the elements of technology that I would like to use, however, my school would have to have access to expensive equipment like a projector and a calculator projector. These kinds of equipment were things that my high school went without for lack of funding, and I feel that this may be an issue for my future school as well. I feel that it is not a question of whether or not it is our responsibility as educators accommodate these changes, but rather it is essential to our future students' learning to be exposed to the growing technology in the classroom, not only because technology skills will be required for their future careers, but also because the incorporation of technology in the classroom will keep them more interested in the subject matter being taught. Although I believe that the incorporation of technology is essential, I also think that is important not to let the students or ourselves as educators become too dependent on this technology.