My name is Jamie Hicks and this is my introduction and blog post about our first week’s reading. I am a K – 8 art teacher at an urban school district in York, PA. I have been teaching since 2010 and would like to incorporate more technology into my classroom. I am studying for my M. Ed. in LDT through Penn State, World Campus to learn as much as I can about how I can use technology to an art classroom.

Our first week’s reading is all about mobile technologies and their classroom applications. Even though this chapter discusses ideas that are in some cases over 10 years old, it still has many valid points about the application of such technologies in learning ecologies. The first couple of paragraphs under the subtitle, Motivation on pages 427 and 428 basically sums up the reason for being in this course right now. With the cost of tech constantly decreasing while it’s capabilities increase, and due to the fact that many schools have a 1:1 ratio of Chromebooks or laptops to students, technology should be integrated into classrooms seamlessly and effectively. By effectively, I mean to increase student knowledge and achievement and not just as an enrichment activity (not that there is anything wrong with enrichment activities, mind you).

The chapter goes on to describe possible uses for handheld wireless devices, or WILDs as they continuously refer to them. The authors briefly mention learning outside of school using these devices. I know that some school districts near me use the 1:1 ratio of Chromebooks to their advantage on snow days by having teachers upload the day’s lessons, readings, homework, etc. into a digital classroom so that students don’t miss a day of school due to inclement weather. This is greatly advantageous to keeping students in an educational mindset even on days off but also in keeping the district on pace per their calendar year (no need for built-in snow days or tacking days onto the end of the year!). They also briefly mentioned on page 434 using ‘WILDs to foster deeper understandings, inquiry processes, and collaborative problem-solving whether as small groups or in whole classrooms.’ After finishing LDT 467, I know that this is a huge reason for the use of technology in classrooms. We learned about all the ways that technology can be used to foster inquiry, collaboration, communication, and incorporate problem-solving abilities through the use of Wikis, blogs, applications, and more. There was also a mention of using cell phones basically as clickers for real-time feedback, questions, and group learning. I think that this would be a great way to include cell phones in the classroom and have used mine during teacher training days with the Kahoot app before for this very reason.

In summation, this chapter described many ideas for how to use technology in the classroom and the reasons why it should be used, such as lower costs and higher performance of WILDs. It also focused on the idea that quality of education was the main goal for using said technology in the classroom at all. There was a point near the end of the chapter that I think really encompasses my own opinion about technology in the classroom and I will share it here as a quote, “…a third type of convergence would also be beneficial to societies worldwide: a convergence between the technical integration being pursued by industry, the research and development being advanced by the learning sciences, and the wisdom of practice of K – 12 educators.” No matter how much technology you add or use in a classroom, it is important that the teacher still be a part of the equation.