How will you be your own agent of change in the classroom to meet student expectations - is it your responsibility?

A Vision of Students Today



A Vision of K-12 Students Today

After viewing the short videos “A View of Students Today” and “A View of K-12 Students Today” I became aware of data that was both unsurprising and eye-opening. The majority of the data that was unsurprising was within the video “A View of Students Today”. It does not shock me that most college students only do 49% of the assigned readings or that the average college student reads 2300 web pages and 1281 facebook profiles. However, there was a lot of eye opening data in the other video that focused on younger students. I was quite surprised to learn that the average child watches sixteen and one half hours a television per week. It was also surprising that 76% of K-12 teachers do not use blogs, wikis, or podcasts. The fact that students in K-12 only spend two hours per week reading a book is almost unbelievable. Also, the fact that some K-12 students blog shows that younger generations are adapting to this technologically advanced world quite quickly. I believe that it is important for future teachers to be aware of this data because it shows the importance of knowledge and familiarity with new technology.
As a teacher I believe that it is my responsibility to cater to the needs of all my students. Now that I have viewed these videos I see that keeping up on the newest technology will be essential to preparing my students for the world that they will be entering. Since the world of technology continues to grow, students not only must be given the chance to work with new technology, but they also must be given the opportunity to work with many different types of new technology. The purpose of this is so that students can learn how to explore unfamiliar types of technological tools which will probably be necessary in their future career. Thus, as a future teacher I will always strive to meet the expectations of my students and prepare them for their future.
In order to be my own agent of change in the classroom I will take several steps. First of all, I will encourage my students to blog. Even though I am a math teacher I think that it would be very advantageous to start a mathematical community online where students can talk with others about their justifications and any mathematical ideas that they are struggling with. I believe that through blogging students will gain a sense of satisfaction through learning from others and helping others. I will also have a class website that is available to all my students which will have many items aimed at enhancing the understanding of my students. Specifically, I will represent the material on my website in many different ways. By doing this, I hope that students who had trouble understanding me in class will be able to look at the material in another way and gain an overall better understanding. I will also make my website interactive with games and interesting problems in an attempt to keep my students interested in mathematics. I will also incorporate technology into many of my lessons. I hope that when I use technology in my class that I will not always be using the same type of technology. I want to give students the chance to explore doing mathematics with many different state of the art technologies. I understand that meeting this goal can be difficult because students and school systems frequently lack supplies. Therefore, I will attend conferences for teaching math with technology and purchase classroom material out of my own pocket if necessary. I believe that teaching with many types technologies is so important that I am willing to take great measures to ensure it.
I am deeply upset that most K-12 teachers in America do not use technologies like blogs, wikis, and podcasts. I feel that teachers may just get lazy after a few years and quit keeping up with the newest types of technology. I would never want a child of mine, my younger brother, or my younger sister to have a teacher who does not prepare them for the technologically advanced world into which they were born. Therefore, I will do my absolute best to never stop finding information about technology that can be valuable to students. I will do this because I think that I owe the young people, who will be the future, the education that will allow them to achieve their goals and make the world a better place.