Chapters 1 and 2 of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology

After reading the first chapter, it makes me kind of scared to enter into the world of teaching, but also very excited. I am scared because teaching isn't going to be what I saw my mother doing. I excited though because I am learning about technology now, and I can be prepared for what schools are going to expect (no technology) and what the students are going to need (more understanding of technology). I feel that it is not a good idea for schools to not give money to teachers for technology because students from a very young age are using more and more technology a day, from cell phones to computers to iPads. Students are beginning to learn for themselves at a young age too, and when they come into school, not having technology available will stunt their learning.

As soon as I started reading chapter 2, I found it incredibly interesting that technology does so much. Page 9 has a list of things that technology does: "reading and interacting with the web; writing memos and sending email; computing with spreadsheets and statistical analysis programs; analyzing problems with data visualization tools; creating social networking sites; marketing with digital video tools; and making presentations with PowerPoint."

"Reading, writing, calculating, and thinking are what education is all about."

This statement is so true, yet teachers and/or administrators don't want to stray away from the traditional teaching, using books and lectures. In order to read, write, calculate, and think in today's age, there needs to be an understanding of technology. This will in turn allow students to think in new ways that will advance their thinking. This chapter really nails in the idea that everything is changing: how we think, how we communicate, and even how we learn. Communication isn't just now taking a test and telling the teacher, "Oh, I don't really understand this." Instead, there are so many ways to now communicate, through technology, through classroom work using other assessments other than worksheets and tests..

The chapter addresses a topic of "just-in-time learning." This notion is that whenever you need to learn something else in order to accomplish a task, you can find out what you need to know. This notions contradicts the tradition notion of educators that you need to learn everything you can possible while in school just in case you need to know it later. With this said, we spend over 15 years in school learning stuff that we don't really need to know. It isn't a waste of time, but to the person who knows exactly what they are good at, such as the student who drops out and becomes the inventor of the computer, they spend time in class not really learning. "The skills necessary for just-in-time learning are more skill-based than fact-based." This learning of skills will be more beneficial to everyone because they will be able to apply those skills to anything in life.

This chapter also focuses on enhancing learning through customization, learner control (a part of customization), interaction, scaffolding (a part of education, whether you incorporate technology or not), games and simulation, multimedia, publication, and reflection (again, an important part of education whether there is the incorporation of technology or not).