The Integration of Technology into a Classroom

I feel that technology is an important tool that can enhance students’ learning and understanding of a new concept. For as long as I can remember, technology has been used in some way in all of my classroom experiences. From elementary to high school, the most used technologies were overhead projectors, televisions, computers and possibly PowerPoint. Throughout my college experience, the most widely used technology has been PowerPoint, and I’ve only recently been introduced to the Elmo. However, there is only one real experience that I will always remember where a professor’s use of technology completely changed my view on history.
About a year ago, I had to take a winter cram course on colonial history, which was a requirement for my A.A.T. degree. Before taking this class, I really hated the idea of history. I didn’t understand any of it, nor did I care to understand it. This ignorance was the result of past teachers and professors who succeeded in making history seem boring and confusing with their monotone and unorganized lectures. Very little technology was used and if it was used, it was used inappropriately (i.e. playing videos recorded from the history channel for an entire class). Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to my 2 week long cram course, with a 4 hour history lesson every day. Fortunately, to my surprise, this professor found a new, intriguing way of using technology to enhance his history lectures. Every day, our class of about 30 would come into class and sit in our seats, all facing the front of the classroom. The professor would lecture the entire class using PowerPoint to enhance his lecture. However, the difference between how this professor used PowerPoint compared to how other professors use PowerPoint is that he used it for visual purposes only. There were no notes on his PowerPoints; only pictures. This professor would use his own notes to lecture from, along with the many MANY pictures that he had compiled into a PowerPoint. This technique really worked for me because usually when professors provide notes on a PowerPoint, I get compulsive and have to write down every word verbatim, causing me to miss anything that the professor is lecturing. Therefore, by not providing any notes, I was forced to actively listen and only write down the information that I felt was important to know for the test, which would make sense to me when studying the notes later since they were in my own words, and not the professor’s. Also, considering that I’m a visual learner, using pictures really enhanced my understanding of history. In the past, history teachers and professors have used a lecture only approach, which obviously has been ineffective in my case. By adding the use of visuals, I was able to create a mental image of the parts of history that were taught. This really helped me to remember the information and allow me to recall the information when it came to his written tests. Not only that, but for once I was able to find myself having intelligent conversations with friends and family about history because of my new found understanding of it. I can’t possibly put into words the impact this professor made on my views of history by his unique use of technology, but I can say that if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have an appreciation for the past, which is actually really important because history is what shaped the country we know as America, today.