Personal Technologies in the Classroom

When I think of technology those devices do come to mind. However, when I think about technology and academics technologies seem some what distracting. I believe that it was stated in one of the required readings that technology should not take away from the academic portion of the lesson. Using technologies such as Twitter, cell phones, etc can in some ways cause students to be off task and lose focus. However, I have seen YouTube used in a classroom, but the teacher used it to show a video. Im not sure that students would be responsible enough to use it independently, and not search out content that did not have to do with the lesson. I found the blogging used in the class to be interested , and possibly if students are trained properly this may be a useful tool in the classroom. I believe that I first distinguish between personal and academic time, which causes me to use this same distinction when considering my personal technology use and technology that I would use in my teaching. Overall, I believe that some personal technologies such as blogs, and video hosting sites can be used in the classroom when monitored wisely, but for them most part I feel that personal technologies would distract students from the main purpose of the lesson which would be to learn.