Week 9

The graduation rates in America are so low because many students are not engaged, see no value in the education, or cannot balance the extenuating circumstances of their home life while being in school. I believe that the minority students leave school so early because, on the whole, they come from a lower SES. This means that they probably cannot balance their home life and school at the same time. I believe that if I use technology well enough I can captivate my students’ attention and hold them in class. If the content is not interesting enough to hold the student’s attention, then maybe the novelty of technology can hold them in the classroom. If I can keep the students in the building I will be able to teach them. It’s just making sure that they are there.

The great educational technology that exists, just waiting for us to use, means that I will be able to have my students create blogs that follow their interests in history, or post to forums about topics that particularly interest them. If I let the students build blogs that center around something that interests them in history, then they will automatically be naturally engaged. Online conversations happen slowly, which means that the students will have time to craft carefully designed posts, but they do not gain the opportunity to practice responding quickly when asked a question verbally. With the integration of google drive into the classroom, and the ability for students to collaborate on a single document simultaneously, small group work using technology becomes much more efficient than it was when group work was done with pen and paper.

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