Students Respond to NYT: Why Schools Need To Invest In Technology

Our first Student 2.0 post!  For our first outing, we are highlighting perspectives of three 8th grade students from Ms. Sigler’s class at TEAM Academy Charter School in Newark, NJ: Khafeon Love, D’Asia Falodun and Jant’e Smith. Going forward, we’ll highlight one post each week!

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From D’Asia Falodun

Hello my name is D’Asia Falodun and I’m attending TEAM Academy Charter School.Here at TEAM Academy in my technology class were are working on a project about being a senoir and applying for college and I’m only in the 8th grade.My school is preparing my teammates and myself for college at a young age. In class we are learning about the things different look at to consider us attending there school.So far we’ve learned things such as how to complete college applications ,applying for Financial Aid ,making sure that you’ve done it the best of our ability, having an appropriate email account, using social media to be successful and making sure that we give our Facebooks a makeover.All of things that you can do to be considered counts the most.

Knowing how to complete an application correctly is very important.It’s very important that know how to complete an application so you can show college recruiters that you do well in school , you have a good personality and that your talented.It’s important that we know these things know so we have a successful future.

With that being said I am very thankful that my school gave me the opportunity to learn about applying for college.Other schools around the nation should recommend having a class or project about college so students will be more prepared when the time is right.Have a fantastic day.

Your Truly D’Asia Falodun

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From Jant’e Smith

New York Times recently isued a article questioning if schools should invest money in technology if test scrores aren’t improving. Well here at TEAM Academy we invest a lot of money in technology. However this money is not going to waste.

Last year in technology class were given the oppurtunity to create their own virtual resturant. Our restarant required hard work. First we had to brainstrom. We needed to think of creative themes, a name, a budget, what food we were goin to serve, etc. In order to get ideas we mad list using Microsoft Word of what things we liked at our favorite resturant. Once this was done we made a blog post of our favorite resturant using Tumblr.com. After we selected a theme we began to make budgets using Microsoft Excel. Then we began making menus. First we had to open another Microsoft window. From there we got to choose if we wanted to use a portrait or a landscape layout.The next step was start organizing our menus into sections.Using thedailyplate.com we had to gather nutrition information for the food we would be serving at our resturant. After all the information was put on to the menu we began decorating.This reqired us to learn how to work with textboxes and graphics. Once our menu was completed we began searching for locations using Google Earth. We then began to decorate the interrior and outterior of our resturant. Then we searched for uniforms for our employes. We also got eating utensils. Because all of this is virtual we used Google to collcect pictures to represent the real thing in our virtual resturant. Lastly we created Prezi presentations to advertise our resturants before its opening. Finally when everything was completed we presented our Prezi presentation to our class.

This brings me back to my point of why all the money my school spends on technology does not go to waste. If it was we would not know how to create Microsoft Excel budgets. We would’nt know how to use Prezi. Nor would we know how to format anything on Microsoft word.Well I have to go now, my friends and I are going to the mall,bye!

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from Khafeon Love

According to the New York Times , some schools have been testing out new technology progams in the curriculam to boost children’s computer skills . Yet , they see that even with the techology skills , there has been no increase in test scores (for SOME schools) . Schools have been putting millions af dollars towards the children’s technology education , yet there seems to be no difference . Therefore , people are questioning if administrators should use money in places instead of technology. This can’t happen .

By the time children are ready to enter college , they would not be turning in hand-written work or anything not involving some sort of microsoft appliication . In my technology class , my teacher Ms.Siger has already began teaching us how to type a proper MLA college heading . In my history class , I already had to turn in a reasearch paper . All using using technology ! How would I have gotten my work done without the help of a technology instruction to teach me all these wonderful , life long skills . I wouldn’t .

Yet , technology is only great when the students can enjoy it during the proccess of them learning it . In my opion , I believe that test score would increase in some schools if children actually enjyed or could relate to what they are learning . In my technology class , my teacher allows me to research topics that I would enjoy and also learn from . Just recently , my tech class learned about possible colleges that we would maybe like to attend . Even though college is a whole five years away , it’s never too early to reaearch it . Also , technology is also teaching us about social network . For examoly , Facebook is not blocked at our school because we are learning how to make great , appropiate scholorly accounts that a college addmissions worker could look at and get the best image as possible . Technology is also used in my school for testing . There is something called MAP testing that measures our academic growth through out the school year . Overall , our test scores increse more than you can imagine instead of staying the same or decreasing . The focus shouldn’t be ONLY test scores though . The focus should be preparing us for the 21st century because at the end of the day i would like to be prepared for college , not to sit down and take a paper and pencil test .

One last thing that technology is used for in my school is Edmodo . Edmodo is a website that students and teachers use to post up projects or other academic things . Most of our teachers have an Edmodo account and they post up ectra notes for students if they may need the help . They also are online if you just need to ask a quick question . Edmodo is a great website that is used in technology , science , english , and algebra . Technology is really a great help .

Gosh . I think i need a break from all this great talk about technology . What do you think ? Should schools keep technology in the curriculam ? If you would like to read the article written by New York Times , just follow this link : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/technology/technology-in-schools-faces-questions-on-value.html?pagewanted=all

Well our school day is about to end . Got to go jump back on Twitter . Bye : )