Interpretative Summary

   For my next assignment, I had to write an interpretative summary on one of my research articles.  I decided to use the article The Use of Digital Technologies in the Classroom: A Teaching and Learning Perspective, which I felt was a good article to begin my peer-reviewed research with.  This article discusses the types of technology teachers and students prefer and their attitudes toward implementing them in the classroom.  However, the only problem is teachers and students prefer different technology types when it comes to learning.  In my post I discuss what was said in the article, quotes I could use in my final overall research paper, the authors motivations for writing the article, and the writers' arguments. 

The article The Use of Digital Technologies In the Classroom: A Teaching and Learning Perspective by Christopher Buzzard et al., discusses research that was conducted on how teachers and students, particularly college students, interact with technology.  Our society today is a “digital generation” as we “use an impressive assortments of technological tools in a wide variety of ways” (Buzzard et al., 131).  Technology surrounds students ranging from social networking to digital homework and teaching.  The authors discuss how and if technology is actually beneficial in the classroom.  For example, cell phones can be used to simulate real life situations, in a marketing class for instance, by having students interact with the purchase of a product via text messaging (133).  Moreover, power point presentations are just another form of technology that has improved teaching efficiencies and motivational learning for students (132).  Finally, the authors conducted surveys to distinguish which technological innovations worked best and to view teacher and student attitudes on the use of technology in the classroom. 

At first glance it appears that the writers are unsure of whether technology is truly beneficial. The authors feel that there is a gap between how teachers use technology and how college students perceive it.  For example, instructors may feel that course-learning technologies straight from the publisher are more effective while students would learn through traditional technologies.  However, as the article goes on and the findings from the surveys are released it becomes apparent that the authors’ attitude toward technology is that it has aided college students’ literacy and transformed the classroom experiences.  The writers agree upon the fact that technology is advantageous overall, even though their studies prove that not all subjects can be taught using technology.  For example, 73% of students felt that technology was of use in an engineering class while only 37% said the same of a humanities class (137).  Overall, the writers believe that technology is completely revolutionizing our classroom experiences yet there is a gap between student and teacher preferences that needs to be closed. 

In general, this article was written to show the benefits and attitudes of the new generation of technology.  The author feels that students and teachers are eager to learn about new digital technologies (137).  However, students and teachers must learn to agree upon a source of technology that suites both.  If we patch up this gap than learning can only improve.  The authors primarily wrote this article to show how technology has helped learning in the classroom but want to stress how we can improve upon this.   

Buzzard, Christopher, and Victoria Crittenden. "The Use of Digital Technologies in the Classroom: A Teaching and Learning Perspective." Journal of Marketing Education 33.2 (2011): 131-39. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Sept. 2012.