Educational technology is becoming more common in schools and this is a great thing. School officials, parents, principals, and teachers know that educational technology helps students learn more, learn faster, and become more organized students. The limits are endless on what a student can learn by successfully integrating educational technology into their studies. If they are taught in school how to use the Internet and educational technology to further their education, they will be very successful in school. It is important for teachers to incorporate educational technology into the classroom not only because of the educational benefits of becoming familiar with using technology as an educational tool, but also because students respond well to technology.
Kids are now more driven by technology than ever, their wish lists ranging from bikes, baseballs, and basketball hoops to Nintendo, cell phones, and laptops. Children love technology and the limitless opportunities for entertainment it provides, so why not add it to schools to keep children excited and eager to learn? Technology helps a lot to organize students, whether it is on the computer, saving documents in different folders, creating organized and clearly written essays or using any of the Microsoft programs to improve their document skills, educational technology helps students children to be more organized. Since kids love technology and use it so often as a non-profit group, Netday wanted to write a survey for all school-age kids about technology and how it would influence their education. The poll was only supposed to last for one day, it was called Speak Up Day, but due to the tremendous response, they extended the poll to a week.
Officials were not surprised that children love technology and would like to see more of it, they already knew that when technology was introduced into classrooms in the past, it always caught students’ attention and interested them. Much more is required these days in order to get students focused and engaged in a classroom due to the sheer number of technological distractions that could be occurring, whether it be texting on their cell phone, playing games on their cell phone, using handheld video game devices, listening to an iPod, or even other students doing any of these things, cause distractions in the classroom and they don’t get as much out of the lesson being taught as they should. When introducing educational technology, students will put away their portable entertainment devices and will be interested in learning and seeing what new technological devices can do.
In the survey, what surprised school officials and the nonprofit Netday, which organized the survey, was that students not only wanted more educational technology, but were also looking for ways to earn money so schools could equip their classrooms with more technology. This surprised school officials because students not only wanted the technology, but also wanted to help raise money by holding fundraisers to financially help equip their schools. This shows how important technology is to our students and kids, we need to start giving them incentives to raise money for technology and help schools become more technologically equipped.
