Reflection 1: Technology Bits, Bytes, & Nibbles

While browsing the blog, Technology Bits, Bytes, & Nibbles, I read a chart called Upgrade Your Lesson- 21^st Century Skills. One of the topics was ‘Communicate’. This listed different ways of communicating as a teacher in the 21^st Century. It sparked an idea in my mind about how much more parents might be involved if they were able to meet with their children’s parents via Skype, or another online resource. I feel like some parents might be reluctant to use online resources only because older people are still having a hard time adjusting to technology. But I do believe by offering more opportunities for parents to meet with teachers, some parents will take up the offer. For example, it would be neat to set up parent-teacher conferences via Skype. This way if the conference times for the school conflict with a parents schedule they have the possibility to talk with the teacher over the internet.

I also read an article about a Tennessee school requiring iPads for fourth through twelfth graders. This is incredibly insane to me, because I knew this would be happening eventually but I didn’t think so soon. The article says both students and teachers will use these iPads at school and at home. I think this could work out really well. I feel like the reason people are reluctant to iPads or use of other technology is because they don’t have use to it for enough time to learn on it, but I think that this Tennessee school may benefit a lot by having teachers  and students using them at school and at home. They will be on the same page because they’ll be using them in both settings.