Classroom Scenarios



Classroom Scenarios

The following are scenarios that use technology to support educational goals. Which demonstrate effective planning for curriculum integration of technology?

Scenario 1:

Students from two high schools are gathered to present their collaborative research on organ donation. The high school students have found that people have many misconceptions about organ donation and that the best way to address the misconceptions is through community education. They show a video documentary they created that explains the donation and transplantation surgeries, and includes interviews with organ donation recipients. They also hand out copies of the curriculum they wrote and tested in some of their district’s schools and demo a web site they developed that disseminates information about organ donation.

Scenario 2:

Sixth grade students are thinking and talking about the Pilgrims, the next area of study in their class. They first talk about the general things they know: Thanksgiving, Mayflower, and issues between the Pilgrims and Native Americans. The teacher then guides them to talk about the things they don’t know. As the students talk, it becomes apparent that one of their biggest questions is where people get “things” when there are no stores. The teacher pushes their question and asks, “Where does a loaf of bread come from?” The students know that it must get made somewhere and sent to grocery stores, but aren’t sure how it gets made. The students look at the ingredients label and see that “wheat flour” is the first ingredient listed. They go to the computers and search the Internet for information about where “wheat flour” comes from. They learn it is ground wheat. They then search to find out where wheat comes from, and learn that a lot of it comes from Kansas. They find an address of a wheat company in Kansas and write a letter to learn more.

Scenario 3:

To teach her third-grade class about decay, the teacher leads a whole-class discussion supported by images from the web. She alternates between throwing out questions for students to answer and showing thought-provoking images from the disk (e.g., a time-lapse sequence of a dead rat's body swelling, breaking open, and being consumed by microorganisms). The photographic images helped to make the point that while some forms of decay have negative consequences (e.g., tooth decay), others have important positive effects (such as turning leaves into rich soil for plants). Following this portion of the lesson, the teacher hooked up a video projection system that allowed the whole class to view microscopic organisms in a Petri dish. Using this system, the teacher showed living bacteria that had been collected by exposing the Petri dish to the classroom air.*

Scenario 4:

A lab of eight computers is used to supply remediation to students who are performing below grade level in either reading or mathematics. Each grade level has scheduled lab time when the students needing remediation are pulled out of their regular class to work in the lab. A teacher and an aide are available to schedule activities and provide any needed assistance. Each student works independently at his or her computer. During one observed class, the teacher dictated sentences related to the upcoming holiday and students entered the sentences on their computers. During another class, students worked with reading comprehension software that showed them illustrated stories and then provided questions for them to answer.*

Scenario 5:

Eighth-grade students are researching smoking and the tobacco industry. To better understand how smoking impacts their peers, they design a survey and distribute it to everyone in their school. They create a spreadsheet to help them analyze the data. After looking at the data collected in their school, they are surprised by the large number of smokers in their school. They wonder how the results found in their school compare to other schools across the country. They ask the computer teacher to help them design a web-based survey that they can use to easily collect data from a much larger population.

Scenario 6:

During either the fall or spring semester, sixth-graders take a computer literacy class structured around a set of technology learning objectives developed by the state. In addition to acquiring a basic understanding of how computers work, students receive practice in keyboarding skills and in using a variety of different kinds of software. They learn how to log onto a network, how to download the particular program they want to work with, and how to save their work on their individual diskettes. They acquire a basic understanding of computer networks and issues such as conserving computer memory.*

Scenario 7:

An elementary school worked three years with the community to raise enough money to buy forty new computers. Two labs were built in the school and twenty computers were placed in each lab. One day, the principal walks by one of the labs and sees twenty students, all thoroughly engrossed on the computers. The school has organized the schedule so that students get two class periods per week to use the computer lab. On closer inspection, students are using different software packages. Some of the students are using MathBlaster, a game that makes math computations more fun through animations and sounds; some are using KidPix to make pictures; some are playing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” The principal asks the teacher how the lab time is working. The teacher responds that the students LOVE coming to the lab – they get to choose what software package to use and they have a great time. Class attendance is always higher on computer lab days in her class.

Scenario 8:

A middle school science teacher takes his students to the school computer lab to begin their research project on the Florida Everglades with a focus on “Can They Survive?” The students type the word “everglades” into a search engine and hundreds of links about boat and helicopter tours are displayed. The students then type in “florida everglades can they survive” and get back an odd assortment of web sites about the Everglades, the survival of baseball, or even a web site about which animals can survive living in the Everglades. The web sites are closer to being helpful, but aren’t helpful enough. The students spend 45 minutes sorting through the sites, looking for interesting information. The teacher tries to remember what he learned in his advanced web searching class, but left his notes back in the classroom. He asks another teacher to watch his class and he goes to get his notes. When he gets back, he and his students look at his notes together to try to understand Boolean structure. They finally come up with a search phrase using Boolean logic that gives them many articles from the EPA and universities about the fragility of the Florida Everglades and its potential for survival in the next century. Unfortunately, it took the full two hours of class just to locate potential resources. The teacher kicks himself for not paying better attention during the in-service on web searching.

Scenario 9:

Jackie, a middle school student, sits at her computer. Index cards containing notes about the factors contributing to breast cancer are scattered nearby. On the screen are three columns in a table she created with a word processor. The columns are labeled: social factors, biological factors, and psychological factors. After reviewing each card, she types the relevant information under the appropriate heading.

Scenario 10:

A high school technology coordinator and history teacher collaborate to have students create web sites to document their history projects. The technology coordinator and history teacher develop a rubric to guide their students to develop good projects. The criteria they list on the rubric are: good navigation (easy to move around the web site), attractive graphics, and advanced web coding (use of JavaScript and frames as indicators of a high level of mastery). The students work hard and produce beautiful, professional-looking web sites.

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