by Rebecca Weinstein

Created on: February 16, 2009

As society evolves so must teachers, their teaching, and in turn, the classroom environment. Technology is woven into our children's lives so much that it only makes sense to use it in the classroom. From laptops to Podcasts, technology is an enriching and integral component in today's classroom. Although many think of computers for mainly gaming and surfing the internet, there are so many more uses for laptops in the classroom!

The internet is a useful tool for gathering information whether it is for homework, a paper, or a presentation project. Providing your students with a list of useful sites will help scale down the time it takes for them to research. Having the world at their fingertips can also be empowering. For example, I experienced a teachable moment last week in order for my students to use their laptops. The students were discussing the pros and cons of their cafeteria food. When most of them agreed that it was pretty bad for them, I threw in a joke about it being Soylent Green. No one knew what it was, and thus ensued a competitive search for the first one to discover what Soylent Green was. Needless to say, they were shocked and grossed out.

Laptops can also be a tool to make teachers' lives a lot easier. Setting up an online quiz site such as Quia.com can provide students with the opportunity to have several different interactive review games, and provide the teacher with self-grading quizzes. What teacher doesn't want quizzes that can grade themselves? A laptop could also be set up with a monitor or projector in the classroom to have a constant news crawler. This crawler could be programmed to have news about the school, the school's sports scores, the school's calendar, or even to constantly scroll the class' homework schedule. A constantly scrolling homework schedule for the week would make teaching easier: no more writing it on the board or stating it over and over again.

Although some argue that students can type faster than they can write, I disagree. Certainly when I went to school, there were typing classes and we learned how to type quickly and accurately without looking at the keyboard. Today, there is no such class in the school I attended (and currently teach in), and I find that students use a hunt and peck method of typing that isn't necessarily faster than writing. I performed an experiment last year and did find that students could text on their phones faster than they could type or write, but I digress. Taking notes can be slow

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