Project #3 C4T #1

The teacher that I was assigned to in my C4T #1 was Ms. Dorothy Burt. Ms. Burt's blog title was Manaikalani in which she focused her blog on all the new technology being brought about in the schools of Mandaikalani. Burt discusses using technology gadgets to teach with such as net books, ipads, and much more in her posts. The first blog post of Ms. Burt's that I chose to leave a comment on was titled Writing Exams? Who does that Anymore? Ms. Burt explained through this post that there were many changed attitudes in the students at Mandaikalani after introducing technology based learning. She explained how test scores had significantly improved since the bringing about of net books and that teachers were seeing such a major change in the students' attitudes to want to learn. Teachers also realized that students are more drawn to writing when using a keyboard rather than pencil/pin and paper. Students overall would much rather use a digital devise when asked to write, because in doing so the students have developed better attitudes at learning and school in general. Teachers feel that students are not only having better attitudes in writing, but also feel their writing has dramatically improved. Burt includes in her blog that even though students are enjoying doing their work electronically and improving their work, students are still forced to sit for hours to take exams with pin and paper.
When I commented on Ms. Burt's post I reported just how strongly I am for technology based learning. I stated that as teachers I believe our responsibility is to teach students in the best possible way and if the method for students to learn best is through electronic devises then I am all for it. As our country progresses, it is only going to turn more and more to technology to stay aboard other countries. Teachers hold the responsibility to prepare young adults for the outside world and if that outside world consists of over 75% technology based systems, then what better way to teach our daily lessons than through electronic devises.

The second blog post of Ms Dorothy Burt's that I chose to comment on was titled Embedding a 1:1 programme. This particular post dealt strictly on net books and the number of teachers verses students were active users of net books. Burt explains that in some cases there are teachers that are more familiar with net booking than the students, but in other cases the students have been operating net books longer than the teacher. Burt created a chart in her post that illustrated how many students and how many teachers were net book users and how many years had they been a user. The post explained how challenging it may be in the years to come with new teachers being hired that may or may not be familiar with net books while their students may be in their third year as net book users.
My comment to Ms. Burt's post about teachers verses students using net books stated that I too felt it may be a challenge bringing in new teachers that are not familiar with new technology to many students that are well known to net books. However, at the same time you may also have new students coming in as well that have never dealt with net books. I stated in my comment that when using technology as a source to teach there will always be a challenge; however, is there not always a challenge in learning new material? You as the teacher must overcome the challenge just as the students did at one time.