HW#3: Review of [How Does Technology Influences Student Learning][Zhu, Mei]

The implementation of technology in the classroom has a positive effect in students’ learning process and outcomes. This paper claims that explicit learning standards and objectives support the effectiveness of technology greatly. Taking advantage of technology in the school work, students will be able to apply content knowledge to real-world situations and be more interested in the text. Also, the paper addresses the involvement of technology develops students’ higher-order thinking skills by utilizing technology as a tool to present their works with a full picture with events. Lastly, the paper discusses the advantage of technology in preparing students for the workforce by enriching the experience of communicating ideas and information.

I agree with the statement that the combination of technology and learning standards will strengthen students’ understanding of the content. From elementary to high school, the most advanced technology is calculator. When I entered college, I learned more software to learn Mathematics. I learned how to use Maple during my first semester in college for calculus class. I found it very useful to plot complicated graphs, to calculate integrals and derivatives of a function, and to make a conclusion based on the results. Gradually, I started learning Geogebra for my Geometry and Modern Algebra projects. Using technology as a tool helped me understand the concepts better and saved me a lot of time in drawing pictures with measurement. Recently, I do not have any experience of applying technology in real-world situations; however, I believe that people do use technology to solve life problems. Except social interactions with the social media, people can use computer to make a model and to test outcomes. I learned to use R to make a random walk model by assigning different variables in a research. I guess that it may be the starting point of applying technology into real life.

I am definitely with the last point that technology brings work opportunities. For example, we can write the software we are expert in onto our resumes. As future teachers, learning to use more software and being able to convert among them will help me to become a more flexible teacher. Students might get bored with paper worksheets, so teaching students to use technology to study and have fun might be a good approach to raise students’ interest in learning.

http://educ116eff11.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/44935610/Article.StudentLearning.pdf