How much is too much?
I just don’t know where I stand on integrating technology in the classroom. Just this week, I read an article (”Extending the Conversation: New Technologies, New Literacies, and English Education”) that says that, “Young people today live media-saturated lives, spending an average of nearly 6 1/2 hours a day with media,” (Swenson, et al., 360). I found myself shocked by this statistic. Six and a half hours is a lot of time to spend each day involved in media! I didn’t know what to do with this statistic. On one hand, I believe that teachers should meet their students where they are and try to incorporate familiar mediums into the classroom. On the other hand, I find it hard to justify adding more technology to a day that is already packed full of media.
Sometimes I think that as educators we feel like we need to add technology into our classrooms because we assume that it is the right thing to do, and we think little about whether or how the technology integration really adds value to the classroom. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for being progressive in the classroom. I just feel like we should think through these decisions to make sure that if and when we incorporate technology into our lessons that it is done so with the students’ best interest in mind.
