Technology

            For thirteen of our educational years, we spent countless hours each day reading and writing. What started with memorizing our ABCs and rhyming with Cat in the Hat, eventually evolved into learning about the importance of Shakespeare using imagery during the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet and how the personification used in the To Kill a Mockingbird made it a classic. And although we spent days studying these terms, taking quizzes to match terms with representations and final exams to make sure we knew the meaning of the words; did we really capture the essence of what these terms really mean?

            Books are great, they have great story lines, characters, plots, settings and details. But students who are in middle school and high school tend to see past this beauty in hopes of getting homework finished in time to watch American Idol or gaze at Facebook. I can say from experience that I was one of these students. I hated reading with a passion. The stories all seemed irrelevant, pointless and old. For some reason, starring at black words on paper that made my fingers feel funny was just not my forte. At least not until my senior year of high school when I was placed in Mr. Dayment‘s Literary Movements course.

            The first day of class, he asked everyone, with no judgment, to raise our hand if we hated reading. With no pause, 35 hands quickly propped up. Mr. Dayment followed with the statement “By the end of this course, everyone in here will have a different outlook on reading and writing as a whole.” By the end of the semester, everyone in that course was passing with not only A’s and B’s but a new found love of reading and writing. Mr. Dayment approached these typically dread subjects, with various interactive ways to make them fun, exciting and new.

            “How do you help your students love words” is an important point I found while reading the article Magnetic Poetry and More: Interactive Language Arts. The article mentions that students already know how to read, write and speak; so my question is
“what is the next level to further this educational importance?”

            When observing students in Mr. Dayment’s class, I couldn’t help but notice how everyone including myself loved participating in reading discussions. Things as simple as drawing pictures of what the scenes might look like on the dry erase board, to watching homemade clips on YouTube were just a few of the simple changes added to make Literature not only motivating but fun.

            With so many new different technologies forming that can help students not only learn, but become involved in the learning process, when is the right time to steer away from the old fashion way of just using books and taking notes? The time to start helping students enjoy school instead of hating it is now. As we become the future teachers for our future leaders, the time has come to adapt to the various changes around us; the time has come to use technology as a means to make subjects more interactive and fun.