Social Justice

I will be using technology in my classroom. Although there are those students who don’t have a computer or internet access at home but there are always options out there for students to gain access. The use of technology can improve the quality of education in a students learning experience. As Swain and Edyburn stated “…it allows students to learn the concept deeply, enhances higher-order thinking opportunities, presents their knowledge in ways that mesh with strengths, and furthers educational and future workplace opportunities.” Technology can only help a student.
Social justice is the belief that “…we are discussing how the good and bad things in life should be distributed among the members of a human society.” This does not mean that if a student does not have a computer then to bad for them, it means that everyone needs to be given equal opportunity for access of technology. Students need to be fluent in all aspects of technology in this day and age. If you are not tech savvy then you will have a hard time finding a job. Swain and Edyburn stated a surprising statistic that over 80% of all jobs in the next 2 decades will require the future worker to be fluent in all technology. I know that workers my parent’s age are not all tech savvy, my father is a perfect example of this. He doesn’t even know how to send an email. He learned how to access and use the internet only 2 years ago!
I believe that I will be disadvantaging my students if I don’t use technology in my classroom. Students can aid in their own learning of the topic when they can find new ways of learning the information at hand. Although some teachers do use technology they could be using it in a way that is not allowing students a social justice. If a teacher segregates between low achieving and high achieving students and the way they can use a computer, they are putting them at a disadvantage and not using social justice. The only way to use technology for a social justice is if you give all your students equal opportunities for success and advancement.
For students who are disadvantaged and don’t have access to a computer in the home that is not a problem at all. The student will have access to the school computers during school hours, they can go to the local library for computer access and they can go to a friend’s house and use their computer. The issue of no access is no reason to cut technology from your classroom because this is not an issue at all.

PowerPoint

The use of humor in the presentation made the time pass faster and made the presentation more enjoyable for everyone involved. One this I really enjoyed was all the funny videos in the presentation. It allowed for us to learn the subject in a fun way that engaged us. Jeopardy was amazing. Great idea!

One thing that was not very engaging was when the presenter would just read off a note sheet and not have much variation in their voice. The presentation needs to be more rehearsed and entertaining. Along with not reading off notes the presenter should not read off the slides too. The presenter’s voice get drowned out because it is bouncing off the wall and back to us. During a presentation the speaker needs to be looking to the audience the whole time.

I would make my presentation more adaptable to my short presentation time instead of saying “if you were my class.” I know that I rushed through my presentation and I could have looked at my audience more. Overall I needed to slow my presentation down but because time was short I did my best to make it short and sweet.

Yes, I enjoy using PowerPoint as a tool for presenting. I will definitely use PowerPoint in my classroom to aid in my lessons. It is a great tool for my students to be able to listen to the presentation but also visually see what is happening. A pro for PowerPoint is you can provide the class with an outline of the information. A teacher can post the slide online and students can bring them to class and take notes directly onto the slides. One of the cons for PowerPoint is there can be technology problems and you might have an awesome presentation outlined and when you are in class it could freak out and not work and you will spend more time trying to figure it out then you would presenting it. This could be a very big problem when you are in the middle of class. Teachers always need to think on their feet when giving a PowerPoint presentation expecting something to go wrong.