Educational Technology Experiences Growing Up

The first piece of cool technology that I received for educational purposes was my Sony Vaio laptop my senior year of high school. I remember it being a really big upgrade from my bulky desktop that took up all my desk space. Although it was a laptop the battery life on it was about 30 minutes so I wasn't able to take it with me to school. It pretty much replaced my desk space. I remember not really needing to use my laptop for school except for typing up assignments for my English class. I had an email address but I would only need to check it once a month for coupons before I went shopping. Educational technology never really hit me hard until my freshman year at the University of California, Irvine where all my classes, including the math classes that were required for my Bachelors. The first 3 courses I took, Calculus A, Women Studies, and English 39B all revolved around the use of triple E. My calculus course used a website called webworks in which we had weekly math homework assignments that graded us once our assignments were completed. In my women studies and English class we used triple E to upload our assignments as well as the library database to search journal articles. I can definitely say that college was a huge technology shock which high school did not prepare me for. It took me a while to adapt to the technology that the University was using. Now, I feel as if I need to learn all the technology that is available for use in education so that I may in turn use it in my classroom for my students. Technology is growing fast and in order to stay in tune with it we must always be practicing it and updated our knowledge of it as technology updates itself.