Difference between revisions of "Powerful Uses of Technology"

Towards the end of the quarter you will work in small groups to adopt a guideline below in order to refine the explanation.

Guideline one (Daniel, Josie, Justine)

Guideline Two (Mike, Kelly L)

Guideline Three (Kat, Amanda)

Guideline Four (Kelly S, Nick)

Guideline Five ( Paul, Claudia)

Place-based Technology

Place-based education allows teachers to place an emphasis on the community and real-life applications of academia (Smith, G., 2002). If we are to add use of technology to place-based education, we can anticipate students’ future uses of technology in their community. Technology surrounds our student’s lives - when they go home, they will almost always interact with technology. Connecting learning targets to student’s lives outside the classroom can serve to inspire intrinsic motivation to learn (Vansteenkiste et al., 2004). If we, as teachers, use the technology that our students use at home, we can connect academic and home life.

   For example, if we were to create a physics unit around designing realistic movement, we would be involving many of our students interests in video games, which could, potentially also apply to future interests in video game design; making physics a useful discipline for our students.If we hold a book talk in a chat room or blog, students are able to discuss what they learned or what was important within the text - a potential application for future study and discussion in college. The chat room may be a mode of discussion students are already comfortable with and each student gets an equal amount of time to speak. Also, the teacher is left with a tangible transcription of what the students discussed to use for informal assessment. 

For an example of place-based education that incorporates technology, click below: http://blogs.evergreen.edu/investigations/tori-maratas-unit-plan/

Guideline Seven ( Christina, Adam)

Guideline Eight (Matt, Jessica)

Connecting Technology Use to Learning Targets

The use of technology should be tied to the learning standards in multiple ways. The Office of Public Instruction has technology standards that teachers are required to address in their classrooms. In addition to technology standards, teachers must address the content standards of their subject area. Through the TPACK framework, Harris and Hofer (2009) explained that in order for classroom technologies to be educative, teachers must consider content, pedagogical, and technological concerns. For this reason, it is important for teachers to find ways in which technology can best serve content-specific standards while also incorporating learning goals for students related to technology.

When teachers are planning a lesson in which technology is incorporated, they should first review the OSPI technology standards and identify which technology standards their lesson addresses. They should then use the TPACK framework to determine how the technology best serves students’ learning. This will help them to consider not only how students are meant to achieve technology-based standards, but also how these will support them in achieving core content standards as well.

For more information on the OSPI technology standards, visit www.k12.wa.us/edtech/standards/.

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