Technology Literacy

The three technology tools that I believe teachers today must be proficient with in order to model literacy to students are computers, smartboard, and using digital videos. Computers are a key tool in success in today's classrooms. By teaching kids how to use them and what the different programs are, will help them with their future encounters when using them. The smartboard I am not too familiar with as we did not have that when I was in school, but as I visited my son's Kindergarten classroom several times throughout the school year was able to watch the teacher use it a little bit. It is like an interactive whiteboard that is a lot like a computer. The kids are engaged and learning hands on. It beats the big old black chalkboards they used to have. Digital videos can be useful for a wide array of lesson plans. You can use them for various lessons to teach and show many different subjects. If I had all of these technological tools I would definitely use them and teach the kids how to use them as well. My son would tell me how they do interactive math lessons and such on the smartboard and was always excited to tell me what he was learning. I think it's a great way to get students engaged and put the "fun" back into learning. I would definitely try to get the children as involved as I could while teaching lessons on it. I think that it would be a huge benefit for the students who would get to help use any technological tools because they are learning about them while learning on them! In almost any job or degree you need to know some about computers, so by starting them young at getting familiar with computers will definitely benefit them in the long run. The videos can help bridge the gap to certain lessons by showing them vs. just telling them about certain topics. Some students are better at seeing the picture visually rather than just hearing about the picture. Yes, these tools are very expensive, but I think they are well worth it. On the smartboards and computers you can use games to help teach too. I think it is neat to watch how you can make almost anything into a game and get a much better response from the kids, and you can definitely do that with a lot of technological tools today!