Dr. Yong Zhao

Dr. Zhao reminded us to look to the future and stop teaching to the past. It's a digital world out there and we need to get onboard as teachers, as a school, and as a district. Technology is evolving. How cool would it be to take a virtual tour in another country without actually leaving the USA? Or practice your Spanish in a Spanish speaking country from your classroom. Global interaction is at our fingertips and we should take advantage of it. Students love to interact. We could have them interacting with peers around the world as they are learning. The corporate world have embrace this technology era, education needs to embrace it as well. Competition was mentioned as a way to get schools on the technology page. Each district or school would compete by implementing technology tools for student learning. There's lots of technology tools that students already have experiences with - GPS, You Tube, Webcam, Facebook, Text Messaging, Ipods, Cellphones, Google, just to name a few. These same tools can be used as a medium for learning. Students come to school thinking out of the box and we place them inside the box. Then we are puzzled as to why they are not striving in school. We do need to rethink our educational structure. We have to stop trying to fit the new way of teaching with technology into the old way of teaching. We can start small. Implementing one tool at a time. Let the students be the experts. In ESL we do use games as a means for teaching English. Why can't we use technology games for teaching content? Learning should be fun and exciting for the students. Technology is the future, so as teachers we need to teach students to be technologically successful. My concern is cost per family. How many students would have access to a variety of tech tools outside of the classroom?