Technology in the Classroom

In my classroom I want to keep things simple.  I think people over complicate education with technology.  Most of the time its not necessary and only creates problems.  The best teachers do not use technology to teach kids and the lessons are taught hands on by talent not smart boards and whatnot.  Speaking of smartboards; talk about an overpriced unreliable messy looking chalk board.  Writing on a smartboard looks shoddy and chalk boards do the job just fine, why are we wasting our money on these things? Half the time they collect dust.  I feel like too many teachers become obsessed with powerpoint and allow their lesson to be guided by a program.  Power point lectures were rarely done correctly in my highschool and I gained nothing from seeing the teacher press the screen instead of the space bar.  Of course technology has its place, I'm a science major, I will be using technology on a daily basis.  However, technology should never replace a solid lesson.  The best teachers I've had used nothing more than a dry erase board or chalkboard.  We don't need to over develop something that already works.  Some of these technologies provide minimal benefits and instead create distractions or are relatively unreliable.  Kids don't need even more technology in a "technology based world", the following generations will be able to figure out gadgets even easier than the current.  They will go home and log onto computers or video games, they grow up with this stuff, they probably know it better than anybody; the last thing we need to worry about is our children not being exposed to enough technology.  Some technology can get kids interested but from my experience it doesn't get them interested in learning, they just play around with the tech and lose interest in the content.  I plan on familiarizing my students with current science technologies in labs and class but I plan on teaching content lessons in a much simpler way.