blog post 5

                The one particular question that I hope to answer in my paper deals with the debate over whether or not technology used in the school is harmful or beneficial to the students.  My stance on this topic is that technology does in fact promote learning, achievement, and motivation and in turn it is beneficial to students.   In any research paper it is important to have a standing thesis on your particular stance.  My thesis for this paper is as such; it important to incorporate technology in the classroom because it promotes academic achievement, student learning, and student motivation. 

                I know that there has been a lot of debate recently about whether or not technology is beneficial or harmful to students, so I chose to pick this particular topic because I wanted to further investigate this controversy.  After reading multiple pieces of literature and research on this topic, I decided that technology does more than it hurts.  We live in a society where technology is prevalent with almost everything we do.   With that being said, technology has started to become more available in the classroom through the use of computers, smart boards, webcasts and many other devices.  These privileges in the classroom are extremely helpful to the students because it promotes a sense of active learning all the time.  There are two different types of learning, passive and active learning.  Passive learning is where the students are sitting in their seats taking in information, basically just verbally listening.  Active learning is where the students are engaged in learning, they are moving around, talking to each other, interacting with something else that complements their learning.  While many students use technology for this very reason many people also feel as though technology in the classroom takes away from valuable learning time and skills.  For instance, one particular argument that people would make is the fact that sometimes technology does not always cooperate and there can be technical glitches that get in the way.  This does in fact take away from time the teacher could spend teaching and working with students.  Also, many people feel as though technology does not address student’s specific needs, which can only be addressed with teacher to student interaction.  I would argue this because there are multiple educational computer games that help with student learning, which address particular needs like fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, basic math skills and many more. 

                I have read multiple sources of information on this topic and like most things, there are pros and cons to anything that is done or used.  In this instance I feel strongly that the pros out weight the cons.  I have read multiple online sources dealing with the controversy; I have read a few scholarly journals on based on the test scores and the achievement rates of students when using technology in the classroom.  Also, I have read two books that describe what technology in the classroom exactly means and entails.  There is a lot of data, ideas and knowledge on this topic that I have yet to review, I will continue to read the research and I hope to further support my position with correlating facts.