EDTECH 541- Integrating Technology into the Classroom Curriculum
| syllabus.pdf |
Vision Statement
My vision is to utilize technology to help all students and staff members achieve their fullest learning potential.
This can be accomplished by:
- incorporating technology to prepare students for a technologically literate society.
- providing global access so students and teachers can access the educational world around them.
- training and supporting staff to integrate technology in their classrooms.
Technology is changing the way students are learning and interacting.
Technology has created interactive teaching, diverse learning methods, and instant results. This has shaped an educational world that is constantly changing in learning techniques and school structure.
Teachers and students are able to participate in virtual field trips around the world, virtual lab experiments that would be too cumbersome to complete in class, and even virtual classrooms where learning occurs from across the globe.
Technology provides students with the ability to use applications such RSS feeds, wikis, blogging, and message boards for research, communication, collaboration, and organization. Through this active engagement, group participation, interaction, feedback, and connections to the real-world, technology proves it can help students learn. " Seventy-one percent of online teens said they relied mostly on Internet sources for the last big project they did for school and 34 percent of online young people ages 12-17 download study aides from the Internet" (Lenhart, Rainie, & Lewis, 2001). Using media cross-curricular provides many authorship opportunities for students.
Technology allows students the ability to complete projects and participate in activities that are not restricted by time or money.
With decreased budgets and lack of supplies, teachers are able to use online resources, such as textbooks, personalized web pages, podcasts, and seminars, to enhance learning.
Educational technology has created a shift in thinking. The shift has changed from requiring students to memorize material that is often quickly forgotten or quickly outdated. Instead, teachers are being trained to help students use technology to gain skills to learn how to quickly and efficiently access this information. With CBCI (Content-Based Collaborative Inquiry) it shifts the focus from teachers having students simply memorize information to learning with understanding. This means students organize facts and ideas into conceptual frameworks that facilitate retrieval and application in new situations (Zech, Gause-Vega, Bray, Secules, & Goldman, 2000, p.207 ).
Educational Technology unites the globe to become collaborative learning communities.
Through scaffolding, critical thinking skills, engaging in dialogue, and developing knowledge of practice, teachers can create a community of learning for students. This shift means technology users demand that performance is fast and user friendly. "At its best, technology can facilitate deep exploration and integration of information, high-level thinking, and profound engagement by allowing students to design, explore, experiment, access information, and model complex phenomena," note Goldman, Cole, and Syer (1999) . Thus, performance of technology is powerful in determining productivity, goal achievements, organization, interventions, and educational technology tool usage.
When effectively integrated into the curriculum, technology tools can extend learning in powerful ways. These tools, including the Internet and multimedia applications, can provide students and teachers with:
- Access on up-to-date, primary source material
- Methods of collecting and recording data;
- Ways to collaborate with students, teachers, and experts around the world
- Opportunities for expressing understanding via images, sound, and text
- Learning that is relevant and assessment that is authentic
- Training for publishing and presenting their new knowledge.
http://www.edutopia.org/teaching-module-technology-integration-what
References
Goldman, S., Cole, K., & Syer, C. (1999). The technology/content dilemma [Online]. Available: http://www.ed.gov/Technology/TechConf/1999/whitepapers/paper4.html
Lenhart, A., Rainie, L., & Lewis, O. (2001). Teenage life online. Research report.Washington,D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
What Is Technology Integration? | Edutopia. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/teaching-module-technology-integration-what
Zech, L., Gause-Vega, C., Bray, M., Secules, T., & Goldman, S. (2000). Content-based collaborative inquiry: A professional development model for sustaining educational reform. Educational Psychologist, 35(3), 207-217. Retrieved from Professional Development Collection database.
