Educational Technology Philosophy

Education is considered as an importance for everyone. It is an instrument to help us more intelligence and also help us enable to compete in society. King (1948) stated that “education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life” (para 2).

I think teachers play the main role for students and in education. Learners will learn better if teachers know how to teach, motivate, and understand them. Pragmatism concepts become one of my philosophies. Children are curios to learn a lot of things. It is the teacher’s job to catch their motivation and use our own abilities to teach them. Existentialism is another one of my favorite. Both pragmatism and existentialism believe that children are different and education should be diversified. Diversity in education is necessary because children will be able to choose what they would like to learn by depending on their skills and potentials. It will not be easy for teachers to teach students who have different interests in the same class. One more thing is only one method of teachings will not work for all children.

As a teacher, I believe in difference of children. I used to have at least 50 students in each classroom; therefore, many methods were used in my classrooms. I also believe that teachers should be the good model for students, besides their parents. What teachers do, it is observed by students. A good teacher will be the good example for students.

I taught English in Thailand and I used Communicative Approach with my students. I believe in learning by doing. My students had a lot of activities to work on such as role-play, so they used their listening, speaking, and communication skills. Teaching English is quite difficult in Thailand because people speak Thai and students will not have a chance to talk or use English with native speakers. It has been a problem for Thai children that they know English grammar but they do not know how to speak. I hope if Thai teachers are more active and learn more how to teach foreign language, our students will be able to learn how to speak, use, and communicate in English better.


Reference
King, M. L. Jr. (1948). The purpose of education. AFRO: American Almanac. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://www.toptags.com/aama/voices/speeches/pofed.htm