Teaching and learning process nowadays have changed. Teaching and learning process are different from the classroom in the past. In today’s world,technology has become very important in everyday life because the integration of technology within the system. Changes in technology in recent decades have greatly influenced the ways in which we work, play, and learn. Today’s students have grown up in a digital age and technology is part of their daily lives. There are more and more teachers, administrators, parents and students are beginning to understand how learning is changing because of the connection we can make using technologies (Richardson, 2010). Learning technologies is easy but learning with the technologies is more nuanced. We use technologies in everyday life differently. For example, in the past we used a typewriter to write a story. Nowadays, we use a computer to type a story. In this case, the computer is replacing the typewriter. Our usage of technology, in this case, can not guarantee the interaction and connection with the audience. This is what Dr. Thornburg (2004) meant when he explained about doing things differently. Things that we used to do it one way, now we do it another way. In order for us, teachers, to prepare our students for their future, we must do different things. We must use the technologies as tools to do different things. Using a computer is not limited only to write a story. We can use the computer to research, to edit our findings, to present our findings, and to interact with the audience.
When I was a boy, I liked to read books. For me, reading books open a new world to me. I can be in another place without having to be there physically. I learned new things from the books. Reading books expand my knowledge. Books for me are simple technologies. I brought books everywhere I go. As time goes by, it is a bit challenging to bring books anywhere we go. Even more, when the book is thick which make it heavy to bring. When we bring one book, that is ok. What about if we need to bring a lot books and they are all as thick as encyclopedia or dictionary? Books can take more space and add more weight onto our luggage when we are travelling. Luckily, nowadays, we have e-book. With the e-book, I still can open a new world to me. With the e-book, I still can be in another place without having to there physically. The advantage of having the e-book is that we can save it in our laptop or mobile phone. We do not need to bring the thick books. We can organize our e-books into a portable library in our laptop or mobile phones which can be brought anywhere we go.
I think having e-books will make our life more interesting. As I wrote this discussion, I started to think that e-books are just replacing the ordinary books. When we are teaching using the e-books, we are still using “books.” It means we are just doing things differently while we are supposed to do different things. We are supposed to use e-books for different things. Hopefully by the end of this course, I could learn more about how to use technologies as tools to do different things.
References
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Chapter 1, “The Read/Write Web”
Thornburg, D. (2004). Technology and education: Expectations, not options. (Executive Briefing No. 401). Retrieved fromhttp://www.tcpdpodcast.org/briefings/expectations.pdf
Laureate Education, Inc. (Thornburg, D.). (2010). The Emergence of Educational Technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.
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