My integration

After reading the different stages of Technology Integration I felt as though personally I am in between stage 4 (appropriation) and stage 5 (innovation). I know of a good deal of websites and apps and what not that I could use and I am aware of different education websites and what not that I would be able to use, but I handle use any of them personally to help me. I am having trouble getting to that 5th stage, in my cohort I feel as though we are somewhat of the in betweeners, meaning that for the beginning part of our education we were taught the "traditional" but as we progressed is when technology really started to take off in school so we were getting more introduced to it. So most of us (my cohort) is able to swing back and forth between a more "old" and "new" school education and tools. That makes it hard for me to make the leap to the next level because while all of the apps and websites are good and can be extremely useful I feel that nothing can beat "a good ole fashion handwritten letter....that you pick up from the mailbox" as my mother would say. I have been lucky enough to observe a few class (all in Michigan, where my old school is) and noticed that none of them were heavy uses of technology and none were completely anti technology. They all had a different mix of integration. Mostly this is true because of the economic status of each school, a couple of them seemed to incorporate more technology into their classrooms they simply couldn't afford it. BUt I did notice that the classes that I observed where students were using technology more (mainly computers to play games and practice different aspects of English, Science, and Social Studies) the students seemed to be more involved in "regular" class (without technology) than those students who never even went to their own computer lab. Whether this be directly related to the fact that they didn't have the technology of because their status I am not sure.