Educational Technology

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 learners. The limits are endless to 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 enhance 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 that come from becoming familiar with using technology as an educational tool, but because students respond well to technology.

Kids are now more tech-driven than ever, their wish lists ranging from bikes, baseballs and basketballs to Nintendos, cell phones and laptops. Kids love technology and the endless entertainment opportunities it provides, so why not bring it into schools to keep kids excited and eager to learn? Technology helps a lot in organizing students, whether it’s on the computer, putting documents into different folders, creating organized and clearly written essays, or using any of Microsoft’s programs to improve their document skills, educational technology helps students children to be more organized. Because 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 impact their education. The survey was only supposed to last one day, it was called Speak Up Day, but due to the tremendous response they extended the survey to one week.

Officials were not surprised that children loved the technology and would like to see more of it, as they knew that when technology was introduced in classrooms in the past, it always caught students’ attention and interested them. It takes a lot more to get students focused and engaged in a classroom these days because of the myriad of technological distractions that might be going on, whether it’s texting on your cell phone, playing games on your 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 as they should from the lesson being taught. By introducing educational technology, students will put away their portable entertainment devices and be interested in learning and seeing what new technology devices can do.

In the survey, what surprised school officials and the nonprofit organization Netday, which organized the survey, was that students not only wanted more educational technology, but also were 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 doing fundraisers to help financially 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.