Just My Opinion On Technology In the Classroom

I received a couple of emails asking for my humble opinion on using technology in the classroom.

                                                                               

First, I strongly believe that children should not use a computer until they know how to READ, again this is just my opinion. I know there are a lot of "learn to read" computer programs out there I don't know if they work or not because I have never used them before, but I have taught  a lot of children how to read without using the computer. I like computer devices to be available in the classroom for research work, and learning computer related skills like power point presentations,learning about digital photography,computer programming, etc. These are skills that I feel are necessary to know in living in a technology based world. I promote real life learning where a child must use all of the five senses to learn and being on any computer device all day prevents this from happening. With that being said anything that is overused turns out to be a bad evil, limiting what they use the technology for in our classroom prevents the technology from being this evil. Again this is just my humble opinion.

P.S.

As a parent it ticks me off when I see my kids on the computer when it is a beautiful weather day outside when "school" time is over. Being 40 I appreciate play time, computers hadn't taken over outside play time when I was growing up.