Reflections on Week 4 Readings, Part Two

I did not get much out of Heid's chapter Technology in Mathematics Education: Tapping into Visions of the Future because the content was focused on math education. I understand that this chapter is from a book published by NCTM so of course it will be about math only. I know it must be challenging for instructors in the STEM program to come up with relevant readings for math and science, but we do appreciate readings geared towards our content. I agree with Heid's point that technology can be very useful for assisting students with rote tasks so that there is time to explore higher levels of thinking (p. 347). In science is it useful to record data in excel and then graph it. It is much faster to graph something with excel than to do it with a pencil and graph paper. I thought the ideas about how technology will influence the day-to-day aspects of running a classroom are also interesting. The spread of information via the Internet, whether it is between students, teachers, administrators and/or districts is a very powerful thing that has not been fully utilized.