Technology in the Preschool Classroom



Technology in the Preschool Classroom

Presentation Transcript

Learning Theory and Instructional Strategies

The goal of education in the 21st Century is to help guide students to develop intellectual tools and learning strategies needed to acquire knowledge that allows students to think productively, frame and ask meaningful questions and contribute as well as assist in creating life-long self-sustaining learners and learning opportunities that are transferred into the real world. Learning is based on understanding and usable knowledge which involves important concepts and specifies contexts that are applicable and support understanding and transfer. Learning is grounded in background or preexisting knowledge, using this to construct new knowledge and understanding based on what they already know and believe with a focus on process rather than product. Learning is also active, helping students to take control of their own learning and recognize when they understand and why they need more information. In the 21st Century, “the meaning of knowing has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it.”

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

Learning theory and instructional strategies are grounded in many psychological studies such as Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. Traditionally, learning and education has been focused around the verbal and logical sense, expressing knowledge in the forms of oral communication and writing as well as solving problems and thinking sequentially. With 21st Century learning we still need to focus on the verbal and logical methods of learning, as well as incorporate what Howard Gardener discovered when studying the brain and learning to be just as important as the verbal and logical sides of learning and education. These alternate intelligences are visual, kinesthetic, musical, intra and interpersonal, naturalist and existential, creating students that are engaged in learning and education beyond basic literacy and beyond the traditional definition of being literate. By using Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences to create, support and ground learning and educational experiences, educators are able to systematically effect change in new methods in thinking and learning for the 21st Century by accepting the belief that “All children can learn” and seeking to build on student’s prior knowledge in the area of multiple intelligences.

Five Frames of Mind

Along with Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardener also developed five frames of mind that build and tried and true methods of education and learning. Gardener believed that focusing on Multiple Intelligences within the Five Frames of Mind to acknowledge, describe, perceive and cultivate mind, education and learning will move from the traditional methods in learning and education towards taking place in all environments, existing and continuing throughout the entire productive life as a whole. Using Gardener’s Five Frames of Mind, disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful and ethical, educators are able to draw out and work with preexisting knowledge and understandings, teach subject matter in-depth providing multiple examples of the same concept at work in different scenarios to provide the foundation for factual knowledge, and integrate metacognitive skills throughout the curriculum in a variety of subjects to enhance student achievement and develop independent learning.

21st Century Skills

Aside from Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and Five Frames of Mind, current educators need to focus on 21st Century Skills to foster ownership and transfer in what their learning to use that knowledge in current society, teaching students to ask inquiry-based questions, recreating and transforming the curriculum to match society outside school as an institution, guiding and coaching students to analyze, and predicting significant environmental influences and perceptions that affect student ability to remember, reason, solve problems and acquire new knowledge. Key learning skills must be developed within the curriculum and linked interdisciplinary saturate learning with guiding principles in exploration and discovery of active learning. Educators must work from strengths, having students immerse themselves in interests and express their passions. Curriculum should be reconstructed and restructured, tying together their core classes toward theme-based, integrated projects where students are able to acquire information and critical thinking skills, to demonstrate understanding, teach peers and answer questions as well as actively seek information and learning opportunities creating all-important participation. Professional development should guide teachers in becoming experts in subject matter, having on-going discussions to evaluate, survey, reflect and pursue the most effective curriculum in regards to skills, concepts, learning and teaching methods backed with expertise and support. Most importantly the focus from basic literacy to media literacy as an essential life skill should be an active part of teaching and learning, creating, developing and extending curriculum around visual literacy such as movie-making, animation, media, advertising, radio-broadcasting, DJing, journalism and web production. The focus towards media literacy in 21st Century education empowers students to become critical thinkers and creative producers using image, language and sound in literacy and creates increased interest and engagement in core curriculum subjects as well as overall academic progress.

Brain-based Research

All of the previous teaching and learning strategies have been developed by brain-based research methods, recognizing the cultural and social bias in how different abilities are valued and developed in the areas of attention and learning, the effect of neural networks and looking at skills dynamically instead of systematically. Attention is a pivotal part of the learning process as well as reactive. Educators should provide a variety of options and adjust approaches, regarding the areas of information, concentration, sensitivities, and memories of students allowing them to independently access, recall and manipulate information. Attention alters the quality of sensory input, allows for the following of information and promotes learning. Using technology tools in teaching and learning allow for the development of sensory attention in which students are able to focus on a task and prevent irrelevant distractions teaching facilitation, increased sensitivity to information that is important at the moment, inhibition, decreasing awareness of stimuli thought to be irrelevant, and creating implicit learning, or learning without conscious awareness.

As well as focusing on learning and attention, learning also requires building new neural networks to fill with concepts and facts. To develop meaningful internalized skills, students must actively build neural networks with conceptual understanding, an understanding of concepts to use creatively and in new contexts. These concepts are heavily dependent on the context of the social emotional environment and involve the use of scaffolded teaching based on skills, background knowledge and expectations, varying degrees and quality of support, materials, motivation and mental/physical readiness within students.

This leads us to using the Dynamic Skills Theory to actively reconstruct curriculum to become effective, meaningful and accurate at capturing skill development. Instead of traditional linear methods of looking at the curriculum, educators should use the “web” as an integrated process that informs and supports itself using cognitive development to build connections between skills and ideas, coordinating skills into more complex mental units as well as understanding how complex concepts and skills emerge from connections between simple pieces. Overall, learning should be dynamic with performance depending on context to support learning and skills should be connected in a wed of interrelated abilities ranging from basic to complex to aide in the formation of new skills and concepts accepting that regressions and failure are essential to learning.

Constructivism

This leads me to Constructivism. Constructivist methods are those that capture Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences and Five Frames of mind and work from them, as well as implementing and integrating 21st Century Skills within the curriculum interdisciplinary, and are backed and grounded in brain-based research methods. Constructivism is a theory based on observation and scientific study that students construct their own knowledge and understanding of the world through experience and reflecting. The focus move from teacher to student, encouraging students to use active techniques and real world problem-solving methods to crate more knowledge as well as reflect on what they are doing and how their understanding is changing throughout the process. The teacher acts as a mediator/coach/facilitator to help gain understanding, using preexisting conceptions to guide activities and build on what is already known as well as creating new information. The teacher encourages active assessment to question self and strategies, help construct knowledge, access tools, resources and materials to formulate and test ideas, draw conclusions and inferences, and pool and convey knowledge in a collaborative environment. Essentially teachers are guiding and facilitating students to learn how to learn making the role of the student less of a passive recipient, as in traditional teaching and learning, to that of an active, motivated and responsible learner that is in charge of learning and the learning process with a dynamic and ever-changing view of the world and the ability to stretch and explore that view.

Constructivist Learning

Constructivist learning emphasizes big concepts beginning with the whole and expanding to include the parts in pursuit of student questions and interests. Materials are primary and manipulative and learning is interactive building on what students already know. Teachers have active conversations, dialogue and informal communication with students helping them to construct their own knowledge and assessment of this knowledge is student work, observation, and point of view allowing the process to equal the product in regards to assessment strategies. Teachers should prompt students to formulate inquiry-based questions, allowing multiple interpretations and expressions of learning backed in the Multiple Intelligences and encourage group work and the use of peers as resources.

Technology in the Constructivist classroom is used as a support to learning, being given much accessibility and flexibility to provide many options for use as a resource. Students are guided in how to choose appropriate tools for a wide-variety of individual versus group tasks and have many opportunities to express knowledge and learning through the spontaneous choice of technology usage to support their learning.

Students Are, Information Is, and Benefits of Constructivism

In the constructivist classroom students are constructed, coming to learning situations with formulated knowledge, ideas and understanding, active, creating new understanding by reflecting, goals and assessment, reflective, controlling their own learning process and becoming experts in learning, collaborative, learning about learning from their self and peers, inquiry-based, asking questions, investigating and using a variety of resources such as technology to find solutions and answers to draw conclusions and revisits, and evolving, taking on current conceptions to build and compare.

Information is consonant, matching up with previous knowledge and thus adds to previous understanding, dissonant, doesn’t match previous knowledge and changes understanding, or ignored, doesn’t match previous knowledge and is rejected.

The benefits of Constructivism are (read slide).

This now leads us to how the use of technology in education, integrated with successful and effective learning and teaching methods and strategies, can build on and use theories to create the ultimate learning experience for our 21st Century learners, in this case focusing on preschoolers and the use of iPads as beneficial to the creating the initial backbone of their continual life-long learning experience.

Technology to Meet Standards

As with all teaching and learning, we need to first address the standards of such. First of all, what are the technology standards and second of all, how does teaching with technology meet these standards? As we focus on 21st Century skills and learning to redirect, restructure and refocus our curriculum and teaching/learning strategies and methods, we must ground and back our practices in standards. The standards drive our decision about what we teach and examines content to inform instructional design and curriculum and are specific to each state as well as on a national level.

In Vermont we have the VT Framework, based around grade expectations, that has thus far set forth a vision of learning in Vermont and has been the educational goals in the areas of vital results, fields of knowledge and learning opportunities in the last 12 years to guide planning in units and lessons. Slowly, we are stepping away from the VT Framework of standards and moving toward the Common Core, adopted by the Vermont Board of Education on a national curriculum standards level, to eventually replace the Framework with a goal to completely transition by 2014. Currently there are only 2 disciplines developed in-depth in the Common Core so we need to bounce between the Framework and Common Core until the transition is complete.

Since the Common Core aren’t developed in the areas of technology just yet, we will look towards the VT Framework standards in the area of technology to see how we can meet these standards by using iPads in preschool curriculum. (Go to VT framework link on slide, explore area of technology in the grade level Pre-K/K to show standards for the current level and the level to be reached for the upcoming year to audience and briefly restate technology standards)

As well as the Framework and Common Core, Vermont also has the Vermont GLE’s (Grade Level Expectations). These state standards are created for each field of knowledge as well as assess technology skills and were revised in 2010 to reflect changes in national technology standards and 21st Century skills and dispositions. (Go to VT GLE’s link on slide, explore area of technology in the grade level Pre-K/K to show standards for the current level and the level to be reached for the upcoming year to audience and briefly restate technology standards)

Technology

To get more specific in the area of technology standards we have the National Educational Technology Standards or NETS created for students, teachers and administrators at the national level. These standards were developed by the ISTE and address the skills and dispositions required by students, teachers and administrators for integration of technology in the curriculum providing not only standards but also student profiles and scenarios to understand and provide nation-wide examples of in-class implementation. (Go to NETS link on slide, explore area of technology in the grade level Pre-K/K to show standards for the current level and the level to be reached for the upcoming year to audience and briefly restate technology standards).

As well as the NETS, we can get even more specific in technology standards with the NETS-T, professional attributes all teachers and administrators should have in regards to educational technology use and application. Teachers and administrators have a critical role to play in envisioning, establishing and supporting a learning environment conducive to learning with technology so these standards are created specifically for successful and effective technology use in the classroom, as well as on a professional level, by teachers and administrators. (Go to NETS-T link on slide, explore area of technology in the grade level Pre-K/K to show standards for the current level and the level to be reached for the upcoming year to audience and briefly restate technology standards).

To culminate our specific focus on technology standards, the last measure we should meet in the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. These are a set of skills that prepare students to being contributing members of a global society and involve the use of technology and telecommunication networks. The Partnership provides a holistic view of 21st Century learning and teaching combining a discrete focus on 21st Century outcomes, the blending of skills, content, knowledge, expertise and literacy, with innovation support to help master the multi-dimensional abilities required of 21st Century students. The Partnership has focuses in the areas of Life and Career, Learning and Innovation in the area of the 4 C’s -- critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity, Information and Media Technology skills, combining the core subjects with 21st Century themes, Standards and Assessment, Curriculum and Instruction, Professional Development, and Learning Environment.

Content Knowledge

In the areas of content knowledge when meeting the standards, we need to upgrade curriculum to meet 21st Century Skills using a practical route in a backwards design method, starting with assessments, or what we want students to get out of units, lessons and fields of knowledge of a content area and work backwards to revise content and skills. Curriculum Mapping is a good example of this, it analyzes the curriculum by electronic means to communicate and process curricular revision. Using Curriculum Mapping in a backwards design examines the curriculum for discrete and specific purposes with the goal of improving what is taught and how it is being presented to match dynamic 21st Century technology and real-world examples. Content, skills and assessment need to be revised for timeliness and aligned for coherence to direct, engage and show growth linking assessments and content to upgraded skills and proficiencies aligning with curriculum and standards. Essentially technology should be used as a knowledge-base and tool for communicating and sharing change to cultivate skills in the new world such as new forms to convey ideas, new ways of thinking and new skills for processing and sorting information pertinent to the 21st Century.

As well as an upgraded curriculum, we need to upgrade our school as an institution as it applies to schedules, grouping and space to meet our 21st Century learners where they are.

Learning and Technology to Support Teaching and Learning

As educators we need to define and understand what it means to be educated in the 21st Century and keep this in mind as we plan and implement our teaching, using appropriate pedagogy, content and technology tools, or the TPCK model of technology integration. We need to link our general technological knowledge (TK) with that of our students as well as continually building and expanding upon, We also need to align technological knowledge with pedagogy (TPK) to guide how and what types of technology to use with goals of pedagogy in mind, using technology at the service of pedagogy. Finally we need to put together technological knowledge and content (TCK) to view the impact of technology in a specific content area to see how that technology can change, develop and impact that area for the better. Aligning all 3 areas, technology, pedagogy, content and knowledge (TPCK) we then need to use the SAMR model to view what types of technology have impacts on student learning.

SAMR method of learning focuses on 2 enhancement areas of technology integration, substitution and augmentation and 2 transformational areas of technology integration, modification and redefinition. All 4 SAMR methods of technology integration are useful and valuable in the appropriate context, but we need to aim and strive for technology to significantly redesign and create new tasks and goals to support teaching and learning in order to make it effective and meaningful to our 21st Century learners.

Why iPads?

In a study done by the National Association of the Education of Young Children and in an article released in the Chicago tribune, iPads were trialed, researched and proven to be intuitive and necessary for 3-5 year olds in education that are raised in a world of ubiquitous technology and constant connectivity. Using iPads as another teaching and learning tool, such as finger paints or blocks, teaches to their world as well as gives them educational options, exploration and discovery. IPads would not be used in place of real teaching and learning methods and hands-on, social and emotional experiences and there would be ground rules set appropriate for age-level use at an educational level. Ipads are not just toys, games and music; they involve math and literacy elements as well and are teaching young students at a learning level beyond their current years. Sandra Calvert, the founder and director of the Children’s Digital Media Center based at Georgetown University has been equipping schools and educational facilities with iPads at a rate equivalent to that of adult usage, and the young students are taking quick to the new technology tool and breaking out of the boundaries of traditional stages of learning and development.

Professional Development

(Read slide and take questions/concerns)

References

Donovan, M.S., Bransford, J.D., Pellegrino, J.W., (1999). How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, pp. 1-24.

Gardner, Howard (2010). Five Minds for the Future, in 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn, edited by J. Bellanca & R. Brandt. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press, pp. 8-31.

Jacobs, H.H., (2010). Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. Alexandra, Va. ASCD.

Cohen, E. G. (1994). Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the heterogeneous classroom. New York: Teacher’s College Press

Constructivism as a paradigm for teaching and learning. (2004). Retrieved from

Neuroscience and the classroom: Making connections. (2012). Retrieved from

Puentedura, R. (Performer) (n.d.). Tpck and samr models of technology integration. As We May Teach: Educational Technology, From Theory Into Practice. [Video podcast]. Retrieved from

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