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This week I am staying with the focus of technology in the classroom. I discovered an interesting article from "Edudemic". This article talks about the use of technology and smartphones in the classroom and some positive ways teachers can incorporate those devices into the classroom setting. The three main ideas that people are using with their smartphones are texting, social networking, and playing games. The article gives a great deal of examples where teachers can use these different ideas to their advantage and create many great classroom activities.

The first idea I thought was pretty interesting was the idea of having teachers allow the students 1 hour after school that is open for them to text the teacher with any questions from the homework or anything school related. This could be any time throughout the evening where the teacher is prepared to receive classroom help messages from their students. Now, I look at this in a couple different ways. I really believe that this could answer some smaller confusion problems between the teacher and student and could help eliminate going over so many homework problems the next day in class and getting right to actually learning new material. At the same time, I do not know how all teachers feel about giving their number out to the students and finding another hour of their day to sit down and help students with their math homework outside of all of the work they do at the school.

The second idea that came to my attention was the part about games. When we all think of playing games, it usually is not beneficial and just for the students own good. However, the article brought up a good point about making the classroom a little more competitive. Try to get students to succeed and compete against others, in a positive way, to make themselves better and the rest of their classmates better. This would prepare the students to give it their all and work to their full potential to try and compete with the people around them.

Edudemic
"3 Simple Ways to Start Using Smartphones in the Classroom"
By: Katie Lepi
http://www.edudemic.com/using-smartphones-classroom/