Technology in the Classroom



TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOMIntegrating Technology In The ClassroomNoe GranadoUniversity of Texas at Brownsville – Texas Southmost CollegeAbstractAs teachers make the transition to technology, their curriculum must allow the student to become lifelong learners. With new hypermedia learning, students will construct and discover in a learner-centered education environment, were they will navigate on how to learn. Teachers will customize learning, as fun. Curriculum will become more student-centered, and the teacher will be the facilitator. Teachers and Students will engage in learning objectives together. The results of the surveys and questionnaires indicated a strong preference for the change in curriculum from linear to hypermedia learning. The results will be used to make further technology decisions in teachers’ curriculum.Technology, just in the past four years has increased in the classroom and support has been provided for the educator, but there is a big discrepancy between the level of technology use expected of educators and the actual use and integration of technology in the classroom. This research will examine the barriers that hinder the effective use of technology in education. In a Technology Conference at South Padre Island, Texas 2009, hosted by Region One CITATION Reg09 \l 1033 (Center, 2009), it was stated that interactive technology was going to be the core to engaging students and enabling them to stay in school. Texas Education Agency and the Texas Legislation have decided that online courses will be the center of attention. The reality of public schools offering online course was going to be implemented in the year 2014. With the United States budget deficit, which has affected school districts budget, this implementation will start immediately on August 2011 school year. What this means to school districts, is that teacher’s lesson plans will have to demonstrate that instruction is been deployed interactively and engaging students. Moreover, research has found that teachers are teaching in the level of, applying, according to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has already updated The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) to National Educational Technology Standards (NETS-S) and Performance Indicators for Students CITATION IST11 \l 1033 (ISTE, 2011). Using smart technologies to engage the students will adapt curriculum to address students’ suppositions. Educators must adhere to the fourth guiding principle of constructivist teaching: the need for teachers to adapt curriculum tasks to address students’ suppositions CITATION Jac93 \l 1033 (Brooks, 1993). If suppositions are not explicitly addressed, most students will find lessons bereft of meaning, regardless of how charismatic the teacher or attractive the material might be CITATION Jac93 \l 1033 (Brooks, 1993). Districts have integrated distance learning opportunities to the schools around the world. Two Way Interactive Connections in Education (TWICE), provides learning opportunities that expand the boundaries of the classroom beyond the local community CITATION Dan01 \l 1033 (Letter, 2001). This type of collaboration allows teaching and learning to occur during the connection, and participation and interaction are required CITATION Dan01 \l 1033 (Letter, 2001). The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaborating (CILC) is another source of video conferencing for live interactive content and professional development CITATION DrR94 \l 1033 (Dalton, 1994). As educators add IPAD integration, to make our students natives to technology, we introduce Web 2.0 tools, into the teachers’ curriculum/lesson plan. As a Google representative stated, “we are immigrates teaching natives”.As a member of the District Education Improvement Council (DEIC), we make decisions on the District Improvement Plan CITATION Bru11 \l 1033 (Springstion, 2011). It is clear that Brownsville Independent School District is signing up with eSchool Solutions. What this means to the District, is that high school students will take courses online. A chosen high school will be closed down CITATION Bru11 \l 1033 (Springstion, 2011). The district will select students to take courses online, and eventually every high school student will be taking online courses. According to Brownsville Independent School District board members, by the beginning of the next school year, every teacher will have access to their own online portal, just like UTB-TSC blackboard. Teachers will create their lesson plans online, and students will have access to their grades, assignments, projects, quizzes, and discussion forums. Campus Student Action Improvement Plan (CSAIP), are put together by individual campuses for the campus budget. This documentation demonstrates, in detail, how the funds are spent. With this information in place, E-Rate supports technology funds for the school districts. These funds, is what allows the integration of technology in the classrooms. As lesson plans are modified, teachers are going to be held accountable for integrating effective use of technology and at the same time, making the lesson engaging to the student. The educator will allow the students to be creative, which will allow the student to navigate and make the personal connection to what the educator is teaching. Understanding by Design, describes curriculum, as backward design. To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination CITATION Jac93 \l 1033 (Brooks, 1993).Cognitive development literature identifies certain behaviors associated with various egocentric states in children CITATION CCo84 \l 1033 \m ELa80 (Copple, 1984; Labinowicz, 1980). The perceptual boundedness of the pre-school child and the lack of differentiation between fact and assumption seen in the elementary school child CITATION DEl70 \l 1033 (Elkind, 1970) have observable behavioral correlates. The child effectively mediates experiences through the observation of his own actions and moves the behavior to another plane, that of thought. Reflective abstraction CITATION HGe79 \l 1033 (Opper, 1979) is the child’s consideration of his own actions as the means for learning to occur. In the search of understanding how students will be constructive in the classroom, educators must turn to scientific statistics of education.Now we look into the results from observing middle school teachers. The research involved asking teachers to demonstrate their lesson plans to the investigator. Their daily concepts were analyzed, following a series of questions about the teacher’s teaching methods. During a 6th grade history lesson on memorizing important dates, students were asked to talk about history events, and then state the date of occurrence. The teacher realized that this could become a better learning environment, by implementing interactive games. Mrs. Catherine Valdez, then lines up the students and exercise their brain, by quickly naming the ten most important dates in history. As they are correct, she awards the student with a jolly rancher candy, as they take their seat. If the student is incorrect, they rush to the end of the line and try again. Once this activity was accomplished, the students then moved to the next learning center. The activity consisted, of the students shooting darts at balloons. When the balloon was popped it had a slip which raised a question about a history event. Once the students read the event, they had to provide the class with the date or dates. The learning center that mostly caught my attention was the use of the smartboard CITATION SMA89 \l 1033 (SMART, 1989) and response systems CITATION SMA89 \l 1033 (SMART, 1989). The learning center allowed the students to excel the use of their creativity. Students interacted with a live video and answered questions, using the response systems, between scenes. The following was posted on the chalk board:“The Civil Rights Movement” TLW: learn how using Discovery Education and a Smartboard can help students explore Civil Rights Movement. Learn about a lesson in which students view Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech “I Have A Dream” then complete their own dream speech handout. This handout will be projected on the Smartboard where students will volunteer to share some of their responses. Students will then view key events of the Civil Rights Movement and then work in groups to complete various research based projects on this movement CITATION Cat11 \l 1033 (Valdez, 2011). When, how, and upon a teacher asking students to engage in such activities is a dynamic decision made by the teacher. Each answer a student offers to a teacher’s questions reveals a theory the student is making about the subject. Knowing the students enables the teacher to adopt the curriculum and address the objectives. The teacher then asks the students to line up outside the classroom. While the students are in the hall, Mrs. Valdez pulls out a long strong rope. Catherine Valdez places a tape across the floor and counts to three. The students pull and they determine the winner. Mrs. Valdez asks the students to analyze and relate their struggle to the struggles history has encountered. Mrs. Valdez understands that in order for learning to take place, students must be engaged in the process of teaching. Authentic learning experiences, like this one, will allow such experience which demonstrates real-life connections by associating the concept being taught with a real-life experience or events. When students discover and explore meaningful concepts on their own, they are more likely to understand and retain informationCITATION Cat11 \l 1033 (Valdez, 2011).The teacher needs to have procedures for determining “appropriate mismatches” and the extent to which the child’s learning is dependent on figurative and/or operative processes. The pertinent message here for educators is that we don’t know what ideas are within students’ reach unless we do something specific to find out CITATION Jac93 \l 1033 (Brooks, 1993). Furthermore, the following three foundational principles are important: posing problems of emerging relevance, structuring learning around primary concepts and seeking and valuing students’ point of view. They are practices that guide teachers in adapting curricular demands to students’ learning CITATION Jac93 \l 1033 (Brooks, 1993). Mrs. Valdez’s curriculum met and exceeded the standard district curriculum. Valdez’s pedagogy and professional responsibilities standards (PDAS) evaluation, proved that she exceeded standard III: The teacher promotes student learning by providing responsive instruction that make use of effective communication techniques, instructional strategies that actively engage students in the learning process, and timely, high quality feedback CITATION TEA11 \l 1033 (TEA, 2011).The next observation was on a 7th Math classroom. Jessica Garcia, teacher, was re-teaching objective 4: The student will demonstrate and understanding of the concepts and uses of measurement. They were in the countdown to TAKS mode. Students were in a regular classroom setting. The students were in a collaborative set up, in which they were in groups of three. The following TEKS were being implemented: 7.9 measurement (A) estimate measurements and solve application problems involving length, 7.13 underlying processes and mathematical tools (A) identify and apply mathematics to everyday experiences, and 7.14 underlying processes and mathematical tools (A) communicate mathematical ideas using language CITATION TEA11 \l 1033 (TEA, 2011). Mrs. Garcia holds a Masters in Technology Education. This facilitates the process of integrating technology in the classroom. The following was posted on the chalk board:TLW: relate one or more customary measurements and metric measurements to each other. Students can draw or write examples such as, a meter with a yard, a liter with a quart. This will help connect the meaning of the prefixes with familiar metric measurements. Students will provide examples from daily lives of products or objects that use the metric terms.CITATION Jes11 \l 1033 (Garcia, 2011)Jessica Garcia starts the classroom by allowing a student to write the word “Metric” on the smartboard. As Mrs. Garcia explains that metric system is based on units of 10, she instructs the students to clarify unfamiliar words and phrases in the book. Mrs. Garcia then walks around the room with an airliner (slate) in which allows the students to name a decimal and tell what the decimal shows. The teacher then brings up word prefixes on the smartbaord and asks the students to elaborate where or when have they heard the word. The use of technology allows the students to be actively thinking about the information, making choices, and executing skills. Moreover, when technology is used, the students are in the position of defining their goals, making design decisions, and evaluating their progress. Day 2 of the evaluation, students were asked to walk to the smartboard and select and X and Y axis point, which if imputed correctly would bomb the ship. The students were very engaged and willing to participate, without knowing that they were actually learning about plotting points on a graph chart. Students will continue to gain interest as long as the technology being used is interactive and relevant. Students are learning to use technology through learning other primary lessons. “Educational technologies offer new pathways to learning, encourage the emergence of higher-order thinking skills, and enable teachers and students to interact with real world resources in unprecedented ways”CITATION NMS73 \l 1033 (NMSA, 1973). Mrs. Garcia has prepared lessons with interactive content that allow for student participation in whole group activities and formative group feedback, a proven pedagogically sound approach to teaching and learning for today’s students.The investigations reveal that the process towards creating a 21st Century classroom starts by integrating technology into the classroom. Integrating distance learning activities and web 2.0 tools to the lesson plans leads to meaningful student learning. The notion of digital immigrants teaching natives, promises that No Educator will be left behind! It is therefore important that all educators are focused on making sure each student is successful. The use of technology will identify individual learning gaps, provide intervention and supply each student with focused, engaging learning activities. Technology integration in the classroom is an approach to intervention focused on diagnostic assessment, targeted intervention and progress monitoring. Integrating technology can directly affect the learner’s sense of success. In a self-paced environment, the learner is alone in their learning. In an instructor-led environment, the learner is a part of a community of learners with like interests and goals. Integrating technology is a revolutionary solution that many districts around the country are implementing. This solution supports equal access to technology and affords real-time and remote access to students, educators and parents. It involves shifting functionality from the device to the network or cloud via webNetwork and NetBooks. State-of-the-art technology is greatly enhancing teachers’ ability to reach out to students. It allows educators to raise student participation levels, increase student achievement and extend learning to remote classrooms. The educator is challenged on an everyday basis. They must provide sympathy, be a counselor, parent, role model, and at the same token provide a perfect teaching environment that adopts to every individual student’s needs. Now technology integration is added. The teacher must be trained with continued professional developments, in order to create a technology based learning environment. Make no mistake, dynamic learning environment platforms are the future of tomorrow’s educators. What this means to the educator, is that they will be able to development and create online course. The focus will be interactive collaborative construction content.Works Cited BIBLIOGRAPHY Brooks, J. G. (1993). The Case for Constructivist Classrooms. Valley Stream: Association for Supervision and Curricullum Development.Center, R. O. (2009, 05 12). Technology . Retrieved 05 12, 2009, from Region ONe Education Service Center: , C. (1984). Educating the Young Thinker. New York: D. Van Nostrand.Dalton, D. R. (1994, 01 01). CILC. Retrieved 04 20, 2011, from , D. (1970). Children and Adolescents. New York: Oxford University Press.Garcia, J. (2011, 04 11). Math Teacher. (N. Granado, Interviewer)ISTE. (2011, 02 14). International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved 02 14, 2011, from , E. (1980). The Piaget Primer. Menlo Park: Addison Wesley.Letter, D. (2001, 01 01). TWICE. Retrieved 04 20, 2011, from , B. (1997). Entertaining an Elephant. William Mcbride.NMSA. (1973, 01 01). National Middle School Association. In NMSA, National Middle School Association (p. 25). Parkway: NMSA.Opper, H. G. (1979). Piaget's Theory of Intellectural Development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.SMART. (1989, 01 01). SMART. Retrieved 04 22, 2011, from , B. (2011). District Education Improvement Council. DEIC Meeting (pp. 1-2). Brownsville: Sharon Moore.TEA. (2011, 04 04). Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities Standards. PDAS. Brownsville, Texas, United States: TEA.Valdez, C. (2011, 04 04). History Teacher. (N. Granado, Interviewer) ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download