Technology Autobiography

Technology has played an integral role in my education since I was in lower elementary school. I remember playing games such as “Math blaster,” “Where in the World, USA, or Time is Carmen San Diego” and “Oregon Trail.” The first did actually improve my math skills in elementary school, encouraged by my mom’s promises for rewards if I completed successive levels of the game. The other two inspired my continuing love for geography and history, which I know gave me considerable advantage in my social studies classes all through grade school. By the time I was in high school, the internet was being used far and wide in many different subjects, often with great success. Teachers and students took considerable advantage of the internet, online databases, and power point, which I remember being an effective medium for education. From a personal perspective then, I strongly value the role of technology in the classroom.
I attended Fairfax County Public Schools, one of the best school systems in the nation, which ensured that technology would be up-to-date and used effectively. My positive experiences with technology may differ considerably from the use of technology in poorer districts. For this reason, I have some reservation in the wide-scale use of technology, because the technological level and teacher competency with such a medium may differ by wide margins across the nation. Of course, since I have been out of high school for two-and-a-half years, I am not familiar with the ways technology may be used in Fairfax or any other district. Despite my reservations, I am thus willing to experiment with technology, given new improvements and its dispersion across the country.
From my personal experiences, there are many avenues which make technology a valuable asset in the classroom. For individual students, it allows them to experiment with computers they may not have access to at home. They can use email, word processors, PowerPoint, various websites that have instructional programs or can be used in conjunction with teacher lesson plans. However, oftentimes technology can be abused, as when students simply play games, change settings on computers, play fantasy sports, or any other host of things (all of which I have done at school). Therefore it seems necessary to have quite a bit of teacher supervision when students use technology. Also, many students who are not as familiar with technology may be at a disadvantage; it may be necessary to require a keyboarding class as a prerequisite for upper-level classes. Furthermore, when teachers try to substitute technology for their own inabilities or incompetence, it is to the students’ detriment. Teachers should access technology to aid in the education of students whenever possible, but ultimately technology can never replace the importance of student-teacher interaction, being able to hand-write timed essays or other traditional methods of communicating ideas.