Several of the articles in the Fall Education supplement (Aug. 20) suggested that educators need to adapt whatever technology their students are using in their personal lives into the classroom.
The argument goes that if students use technology such as cell phones and Facebook, so must the classes in school. As an educator myself, I feel that this approach is misguided. It behooves every professional to evaluate which technology can prove to be useful for that profession’s needs. So it would be wrong for a doctor to ignore advances such as arthroscopic surgery. By the same token, educators must consider innovations such as online homework and voice threads, which meet specific educational needs. However, there is no reason for educators to blindly use whatever technology their students use just because their students use them.
Education is a profession like any other, and using appropriate technology is the wave of the future. Using technology just for the sake of using technology, however, is wasteful and unproductive.
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