The primary goals of education have remained the same throughout time—to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to become productive citizens and life-long learners. Even though the goals have essentially remained the same, education itself is continually changing, primarily because of technology. Technology has changed the way teachers teach and the way that learners learn. Technology can become the “wings” that will allow the educational world to fly farther and higher than ever before—if we will allow it.
As teachers, incorporating new technology as teaching tools is not enough. I realize now that this is just automating what we have already been doing in the past. It makes the job of the teacher a whole lot easier—saving us time and energy, but what is it doing to really help the students? We are teaching a new age of students—the "digital natives", one in which some of us ("digital immigrants)" are not as familiar. Teachers have to learn to use the same technologies that students are using and then incorporate them into the classroom not only as teaching tools, but to guide, instruct, and probe the students to utilize effectively in their learning.
My ideals of the role the teacher should play as well as the teacher objectives and student outcomes have foundation in both pragmatism as well as the constructivism schools of thought. I believe the role of the teacher should shift from being the center of instruction, to becoming a facilitator of student-centered instruction. Real-life situations should be used in the classroom to facilitate and teach problem-solving using cutting edge technology. Students need to learn to assess the uses of technology, determine which technologies should be utilized to solve the problem, and evaluate the solution for reliability and accuracy. Assignments should foster autonomy, increase students desire to take initiative for their own work, and create a setting to promote higher-order thinking. Teachers need to allow the method of learning to be as important as the subject matter being learned.
My objectives as a teacher are to create an environment in the classroom that reaches beyond the four walls of my room into the world to allow students to gain an understanding of the subject matter that they will actually be able to use, thus gaining an understanding of life experiences. I want students to make the connection between the educational content learned and life itself. Also in this environment, I believe that today’s digital students still have the need to feel recognized and seen as an individual. My goal is to make learning in the classroom personalized and show students that I not only care about them learning the content but that I care about them as individuals.
There is always a need for improvement. There are always new things to learn. As a teacher, I must constantly learn in order to be an effective teacher. In today’s educational realm, that learning process involves mainly learning the uses of new technologies and learning to communicate the subject matter in terms that today’s digital learner will understand. To be a successful teacher, my methods of teaching have to change not only because of technology changes, but because today’s students learn in an entirely different way.
Change is inevitable in today’s educational world. My teaching philosophy written in undergraduate school didn’t even include the word “technology”. My teaching philosophy today must change to include "technology" to be an instrument in allowing students to spread their “wings” and fly in this new technological age of education and of life.
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