What is Technology Integration?
"Technology is not taught as a separate class, but integrated into the classroom.
It also means that students use technology to learn content
and show their understand of content,
not just their expertise with a tool."
-Mary Beth Hertz
I agree with Mary Beth Hertz given her blog post about technology integration. I like how she includes that for students to be successful, they must understand the tool they are using or else the tool is what is being learned and shown, instead of the concept that the digital tool is trying to communicate. I thought about this after reading a peer review of my webquest. The editor asked if I had given any thought to the difficulty of the task. What I didn't portray in my webquest is that the digital story I was asking my students to complete had been done before. My goal is for students to be extremely familiar with the tool so that the learning is focused around the topic of addition and subtraction of fractions and not around the creation of a digital story. The digital story is just a way to express said knowledge.
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Integration of Technology
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In Angela Maiers post titled, "12 Most Genius Questions in the World", I was fixated on question number six. This question states, "What is possible?" The reason it is important for teachers to integrate technology into their lessons is that it raises the level of what students can learn and what they can produce. It gives new possibilities to what students can accomplish. Many say that some of our students will be doing jobs that are not even invented yet. We need to raise digital literate learners so they have the tools to be successful in those future jobs. I have also seen the personal benefits of using digital tools in the classroom with students as young as kindergarten. I have seen iPad apps assist students in learning their letters and sounds. I have also seen videos instill grammar concepts in fourth graders in ways they understand and retain.
Barriers
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When thinking about technology integration, two main barriers come to mind. The first being access. I think schools need to prioritize their funding so they get more digital tools into the classroom. This includes smartboards, ipads, laptops, etc. Although it isn't impossible, it is hard to use web 2.0 tools when you only have six computers and a class full of students.
The second barrier is professional development. In Marc Prensky's post labeled, "Shaping Tech for the Classroom", he says that schools are famous for resisting change. I think in some sense this is very true. However, at the same time, there are many teachers who would love to learn new ways of teaching, but aren't given the appropriate professional development to follow through. I know personally, I had to be very proactive to learn the digital tools in my classroom. I had to ask fellow colleagues for help when my smartboard was giving me trouble and I met with the technology integration teacher over April vacation to learn how to use my smart clickers. I also had to seek out the IT guy in our building when I was having trouble troubleshooting a particular program that the entire fourth grade was using for a project.
Web 2.0
I have learned about some great Web 2.0 tools that I will use in my future instruction. I have made a bulleted list of them below. I believe using these tools and technology in all curriculum will allow me to engage my students more and allow for better retention of the information being taught.
- Animoto Digital Stories
- Weebly Webquest
- Voki
- Tagxedo
- Easel.ly
- Google Drive
WebQuest: Addition & Subtraction of Fractions
I made a webquest to explore addition and subtraction of fractions with unlike denominators. It also explores finding equivalent fractions. This webquest will be done only after the students have had time to explore digital stories.
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