Tech Trends to watch in 2012

I think this was a really well written article.  I think the author had a lot of valid points about what, as future educators, we are going to have to deal with.  I would like to be naive enough to think that as an elementary school teacher I won't have to deal with cell phones and students bringing their own computers, but lets be honest, that might not happen.  I don't really see how a third grader is going to need to bring an IPad to school with him, but times may be changing faster than even I can think.  In a world where more and more people are reading a book on some sort of e-reader and not in print, how do you encourage a student to bring a book to read and then tell them they can't have their IPad?  I think it is important for teachers to have a basic understanding of all the technology that is entering into main-stream society.  While I don't really plan on teaching with and IPad, I want to know how it works so that when a student in my class is using one I can be understanding of that and not just assume he is using it to do something wrong. 
As far as cell phones go, I personally think it is riduculous how early kids get cell phones now.  I didn't get one until I was a junior in high school; and even then I didn't have texting until a month before I left for college when I started to pay for it myself.  But as ridiculous as I think it is, I can't stop parents from buying their elementary school aged children a phone.  In a high school I have seen where teachers have done polls on-line through texting, but I just don't see that being necessary in an elementary school. 
I do think it is important to know how to teach using technology such as an ELMO and/or projector connected to a computer.  I think kids can learn a lot when teachers take the time to put together a presentation that caters to what the students in their classroom enjoy.  Not everything can be taught from a powerpoint or document camera, but kids need to get used to that kind of learning because it isn't going away.  It is only going to continue to be prevelant in classrooms at all levels of education.
I also really like the idea of "Social Learning."  I think it is so valueable to have students work with each other to solve a problem.  There is so much to be learned in that situation.  Kids are so much more likely to listen to a peer than a teacher who they think doesn't understand them as a student.  I definitely want to integrate this kind of learning into my classroom when I am teacher.  I want to encourage social skills but also see what the kids in my class best respond to so that I can begin to use some of those same teaching styles.  I think I can learn just as much from my students as they can learn from me.

Technology in Education

I honestly can't say that I had great access to technology in my schooling.  I learned how to type in Elementary School and then again in middle school, but I never took a computer class in high school.  Although I feel like I used the computers a lot, but it was mostly just for writing papers and the occasional powerpoint presentation.  And even at that, we never had a full lesson on how to make  the best powerpoint.  The one thing that I still use, technology-wise, from high school are the onlice databases that help to create works cited pages for papers.  I still find that very helpful.  Now that I am in college, a lot more teachers are using discussion boards or blogs online, which is something I am not used to, but I think it is a really effective way to share ideas within a large classroom.  I am looking forward to using that kind of technology.  As an elementary school teacher I know I am going to have to keep up with the ever-changing technology.  Kids have shorter and shorter attention spans now than they did even just five years ago.  So, in order to keep the attention of the kids in my classroom, I will have to know how to efffectively use things like a doc-cam or elmo for large class learning.  I am also going to be learning how to use prezi in one of my classes, so I think that could be a really effective cool.  I also think that I will need to have a really good knowledge of things like an iPad or tablet so that if any of my students feel the need to use one, I can control the use of it the best I can.  Hopefully, in an elementary school classroom I won't have to deal with a bunch of the kids having cell phones or ipad's but times are changing and I have a feeling that by the  time I am running my own classroom I will have a lot more of those things to contend with.