Digital Blog Post # E - Chapter 7

Becoming a 21st century teacher, it's very important to engage your students with learning and the the best way to do so is by using technology. George Polya created essential steps for solving mathematical problems. The essential steps are understanding the problem (You want students to be able to understand what the question is asking from them and see what they already know), Using problem-solving strategies (You want students able to break down the problem), and checking results (You want students able to check their results so they can see their outcome and how they got it to make sure they understand it correctly). Since technology is becoming more and more popular, teachers must use online software selection resources. There are four main ones and they are the following: Edudemic directory (allows teachers to review a wide selection of educational technology resources like laptops and tablets), entertainment software rating board (the way things are rated for a section of ages), Evalutech (a review source for teachers and families), and sttopbadware.org ( an invasive software which allow teachers to control what students have access too). When using technology inside the classroom, you can use games with learning but if you do so it's important to use four strategies. These four strategies will help out not only the teacher, but as well as the students. You want to minimize the use of games that teach isolated skills (a reward system), scrutinize games that function solely on points that won or lost ( they can take a long time), discuss games and their content (You want students to understand why they can and cannot play certain games), and play games together ( can play games together as a school activity). This YouTube video I have attached is a few years old, but it still gives good information on why it's important for 21st century teachers to use technology in education. These students are students in 21st century and you want to be able to teach them in ways they can actually understand by doing instead of just watching. Nowadays, there is so many ways you can use technology inside the classroom. It could be used to go on Google Maps to show what China looks like to playing a game on the computer to allow the student to get more practice on a lesson. The one fact on the video that popped out to me was that in 2016, the most speaking English country is going to be China... That's just strange and not right since our language in the United States is English.

Sources: Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. A Vision of K-12 Students Today. (n.d.). Retrieved October 4, 2015.