Mcfarlane blog

Sheila Wallace
Ling 611
Laptops are coming

McFarlane, S. (2008). The laptops are coming! The laptops are coming!, Rethinking Schools, 22, 22-26

This article covers some considerations educators should be aware of before adopting the technology on a wide scale and evaluate its potential effectiveness or its downfalls. The author asserts that educators should be aware of ethics and power structures surrounding the use of technology and be able to evaluate and adjust the impact of technology on the development of cognitive, social, and emotional domains of students and teachers.
As discussed in the article, the use of computers and technology changes how students and the general public interact, communicate, and transfer information in this digital age. One negative aspect the author became aware of in her experience with technology in her classroom was the fact that she was spending an enormous amount of time maintaining, responding and updating email, webcasts, attendance, and everyday tasks- much of the student to teacher dialogue was taken away by the digital communicating. She also became aware that there was an imbalance between teaching and monitoring. I can relate to this as I have found that in my own teaching, I realized that students were spending much of their time on tutorials rather building projects and needed to find ways to shorten the amount of time we spent on learning the technology rather than using it.
Another aspect of using technology in the classroom that I became aware of through this article is the possibility of a social stigma attached to the lack of being able to know how to use technology. Students can be stigmatized for not being able to navigate through a plethora of technology devices used today. I have not considered the possibility of the this stigmatism.