Yellow Group

Looking back at my technobiography and my last post about technology in the classroom, I do think my attitudes about and experiences with technology in my life have shaped what I think are good/bad uses of technology in the classroom. I also see some differences and similarities between my technobiography and my classroom post. In both posts I didn’t use technology very much when I was younger. This is also reflected in my classroom experiences as it wasn’t integrated much in my education either. Having had so much fun playing gameboy and Nintendo when I was a kid paved the way for me to be open to new technologies in the future. The example I used of a good use of technology in the classroom was when I had a teacher do a good job of using PowerPoint and it made lectures and note taking less stressful. This was because the teacher gave us an outline of the important parts and it helped me to feel like I was on top of what we were learning. She never overwhelmed slides and limited her slides to an outline rather than word for word of what she was covering.

My experiences this year with technology have left me very frustrated. It helps me in many different aspects of my life but also this year it has caused me more stress than I’ve ever had. Having teachers give so much homework that involves the use of a computer and having to be online makes my life very difficult. This semester I am honestly hating school and can’t stand it, all because of technology. I’m traveling on a bus all day on Thursdays and Sundays so I don’t have internet access and I can’t use my computer at all because my battery doesn’t last more than 5 minutes before it dies. There are no outlets on the bus to plug it in so it works. I can’t afford a new computer, new battery, or a wireless card and plan that connects through a cell phone provider to give me access to the internet while I’m on the bus. On top of that for this class my computer won’t allow me to access the e-reserves, so I have to access them at school when I’m only here 3 days a week and have very limited time. Another class I have puts some of the assignments up online in a docx format and I don’t have the new Microsoft Windows to open it. Then to top it all off, I am in a different hotel every weekend and always have issues with getting an internet connection; it is always something whether their service is down or their connection is unbelievably slow, etc. So, technology has made my educational experience this semester miserable.