Technology as a necessary skill

I know it has been mentioned so many times in the articles and also in the class presentations but I think this is my “take away” from this class. Technology is what the world we live in is based on. We live in a world of internet, cell phones, facebook, globalization, and collaboration. As Bob Regan talks about in his article, we live in the 21^st century so we need to teach 21^st century skills. The world we live in as adults consists of instant, constant communication, multi-tasking, and processing large volumes of information in seconds. This is the world our students are growing up in and we need to teach them how to navigate it and function in it. Using technology in the classroom is not just about how to make use of the computer that is in the room, its about teaching our students the skills they need in their tool belt to live in this world. We are not only teaching students skills in the classroom to bring out into the world, we are taking what they do anyway and what they enjoy from our technological world and we are bringing it into the classroom. Just like in reading, we need to build on students’ prior experiences to help then engage with and comprehend a text, we need to build on students’ prior knowledge when they come into our classrooms. We need to provide experiences for our students that mirror what they see in the world, that build on what they know and enjoy, and that prepare them for the increasingly technological world of tomorrow. We might not have grown up in a world like this While the context in which our schools operate today has changed, the goals have not. As Regan says, "While the context in which our schools operate today has changed, the goals have not." Schools themselves are not the same as they were in Dewey's days but their goals and function are the same. We are training children to be productive in the world that they live in. In the 21st century, that means giving them the technological skills they need as well as the life skills that come hand in hand with technology.