Week 2: The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same

For the past week, I have been reading about the use of technology in the classroom.  As someone who has always felt that the use of technology in education should always be minimal, the readings and videos of the past week have been something of a system shock for me.  I do not own or use either a tablet or a smartphone.  In fact, I refused to use email until college, and only then because it was the primary mode of communication with my professors.  I've always been one who shunned newer technology, waiting until it had been proven and tested for a long time before using it myself.  As an educator, however, I realize that I will not be able to afford such a long waiting period before using newer technological tools in teaching curriculum.  New technology should be implemented as soon as possible, once it has been tried and proven.  Yet, technology must always been a tool.  The end of schooling should be for students to be educated, able to master subjects and use them with or without technological tools at their fingertips.
I recognize that the constructivist model of education has become more prominent in recent years, and as Melissa Taylor has written, this change is for the better.  Education should be child-centered because it is not enough for educators to teach--students need to learn.  When I was a child, I learned the times tables through rote memorization, drilling again and again until they were memorized.  Once I had them memorized, I could always return to them, using them in math problems far more complex in nature.  I still prefer to use those lessons instead of a calculator, and often it comes in very handy.  When I work, I have to handle money all the time, and restaurant patrons don't want to wait for someone to figure sums on a calculator.  I still do use a calculator in my day to day work, but as a tool, to augment a skill I already possess.  When I was a substitute teacher, I met too many students who were unable to solve simple sums  and needed the aid of a calculator to do so.  I worry about how a tablet with special apps installed could be used to solve problems even more quickly, enabling students to complete many assignments without learning the lessons which will serve them later in life.
As handheld technology has become more affordable and more accessible, I can see how it has replaced much of the more expensive, older equipment which students have used in the past.  This change would, I believe, be especially helpful for special education students.  Many pieces of equipment which can only do one thing and are expensive can be replaced by one small tablet like an Ipad.  Yet, as Anya Kemenetz has pointed out in her article for NPR , such is not necessarily the case.  The studies which exist to support  such a finding are very limited in their scope and number.  Furthermore, it is difficult to determine if it is because the Ipads themselves are a useful tool, or if the newness of the technology is what keeps students attentive.
I think over the next few years, as the newness of modern technological advances begins to fade, we will see if these new inventions will begin to disappear from the classroom, or will take their place along side the calculator and blackboard as useful tools in the education of young students.