JOURNAL REVIEW #2

By: Katie Haley

Laptop Lessons: A Year in the life of Take It with You Technology

By: Stephan J. Valentine

This article highlighted some very important issues in education. Basically, the focus was on technology in the classroom. The author is a ninth grade English teacher and is part of a pilot program where all of his students are supplied with a laptop for online class work. He pointed out that many teachers have significant difficulty troubleshooting when teaching an on-line course. When issues come up teaching halts until someone can come cure the problem, and teachers will have to actually go back to the old way of doing things temporarily. The next point of focus was “teaching anytime anywhere”, when students have computer access at home they may contact their instructor out of school for guidance. The importance in this resource is that students and teacher experience a “breakdown of the hierarchy”. Also, this resource allows more laid back conversations on educational topics. The author received many well detailed and colorful emails from students who never participate in class and others who are more deviant as well. Finally, students in his on-line course were very diligent, but he did find that “Bad students still found a way to be bad”.

I found this article to be a bit biased still it was an important topic. I am sure not all teachers feel the same way about technology in the classroom. I am sure many teachers have been trained properly in troubleshooting and have no significant issues during class time. As with any type of instruction teachers can always run in to problems and should attempt to educate themselves on how to address issues. If schools are willing to spend the money to supply technology, we as teachers must learn to incorporate this into our classroom. Teacher’s main motivation should be to do what is best to properly educate each child and technology is the key in accomplishing this goal. We must prepare students for the outside world. Also, most students enjoy and welcome computer use. I found it very interesting that the author enjoyed chatting online with his students outside of school, although I think many teachers would not choose to do so.