Technology in my classes (Prompt #2)

Over the years, I have seen technology used many different ways in my classrooms. I have experienced both good and bad uses during school. In elementary school, teachers had us play educational games on the computers in our LRC. I think that this was a good use of technology because it helped the class learn in different and fun ways. In middle school, we got laptops in our classrooms which was wonderful. We were able to practice our typing by writing papers on them. We also went to the resource center and made presentations through powerpoint, which was good practice. A poor use of technology used during my middle school years was all of the videos that my science teacher showed us. They were extremely boring and she showed way too many, just because she would rather show a video than teach on certain days. Afterwards, we wouldn't even discuss the video. We just had to fill out questions and there was really  no point to them. In high school, I continued to have to do presentations in class with technology. Teachers had smart boards, which were extremely helpful as compared to chalkboards because they are so interactive. However, powerpoints that teachers made during my high school years began to get much more boring. Teachers used power points just to read off of them and students had to copy down every single thing really fast. Power points should be a guide with fragments, rather than writing paragraphs. In college, teaching classes have taught me a lot of how to make technology exciting and use it in different ways. My teachers have made sure to use it in useful ways. However, there are still those teachers who use boring power points. Teachnology is becomming much more previlant in younger grades, however, it is not always for the better. I know a family whose daughter is in 2nd grade and the teacher gives her students straight A's on all their spelling tests, simply if they write something down because "they are in the technology era and they have spell check and don't need to know how to spell." This is exactly what we don't want technology to come to.