Technology in the Classroom

Technology is everywhere around us.  It is constantly being used and new types of technology are being created at an ever-increasing rate.  Therefore, why is it that, in most colleges, instructional technology seems to rarely be used and instead there is a heavy reliance on instruction by lecturing?

As a senior going to college next year this is a sad reality.  While some colleges are changing the ways they teach, most of them are still using the archaic methods for teaching that they have been using for decades.  Therefore, college, the place that is supposed to prepare you for jobs, is not embracing how many jobs now use collaboration and technology.

At Cape Fear Academy I use technology on a daily basis in most of my classes.  I don’t sit through lectures and takes notes in the traditional manner that many other students do.  Instead I get to use technology and do collaborative projects with my peers.

My teachers have integrated technology into a lot of my assignments as well as their lessons.  I have used sites such as voice thread to explore The Odyssey and its many themes.  A voice thread is a website where you create a power point type presentation but you can narrate each slide and also have others comment directly onto the project.  I have also used wikis where my entire class had to work together to define and explain various terms about European history.  In my government class, our teacher frequently shows us videos from online that explain topics in a straightforward manner to give us a another explanation for something we are studying.  Even my weekly vocabulary words for my literature class use technology; we get to quiz ourselves on the words using games online.  This is much more interesting than simply staring at a piece of paper trying to memorize twenty words and their definitions.

Integrating technology with learning has been a great experience for me.  I feel as though I can learn information more quickly and more thoroughly through its use.  There are so many different sources online that I can also use in order to learn more about a topic.  And this is heavily encouraged by my teachers. They realize the massive amount of information out there and they motivate us to take advantage of it.

It seems that college will be completely different from what I have been taught at CFA though.  While I may not get to use as much technology in my classrooms in college, I will always have the skills that I have obtained from CFA so I can be ready for the work force.