Powerful Uses of Technology

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Revision as of 17:37, 12 March 2014 by Neepau18 (Talk | contribs) (Guideline Five ( Paul, Claudia))

This page is the third part of the Powerful Uses of Technology wiki: A Project by the Master in Teaching Year 2 Candidates for 2013-2014, in conjunction with "Investigations in Our Town"

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)

How to create a Quality Task that uses technology in educative ways

Students already use technology daily in a variety of ways, sometimes even to learn on their own accord. In the article "Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project” the authors discuss how new digital media has allowed students to start interacting and learning through their peer or other social networks (Ito et al., 2008). They classify three different ways that students use digital media to interact and learn: Hanging out, Messing around, and Geeking Out. Each of these has a slightly different level of student engagement towards learning but all of them do involve peer to peer learning. For Hanging out, students are interacting with technology for communication and skill building purposes. For Messing around, it is a mixture of peer to pear information sharing and seeking quasi-professional insights. For geeing out, students are starting to produce knowledge, build proficiencies , as well as seeking and connecting to professional and quasi-professional communities.

Since this is all student driven if we want to use it in a classroom we need to create quality tasks that utilize the students background and the educational standards. If we are including the standards, some in particular to look at would be the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Math and the CCSS College and Career Readiness standards for writing. College and Career readiness anchor Standards for Writing include specific research and presentations standards using technology. The CCSS Math standards also include portions that relate to visualizing and modeling mathematical problems or conjectures; it also connects the standards for mathematical practice with the content standards in various areas.

If we want to take that extra step from where students already use technology and apply it to the educational standards we need to consider what kinds of activities different technologies can be used for. In the article "Instructional Planning Activity Types as Vehicles for Curriculum-Based TPACK Development” the authors discuss how the intersections between the knowledge of pedagogy, technology, and content can create new access points for students to use technology in educative ways (Harris & Hofer, 2009). By tying the technology to specific activities that not only allow for its use, but expand the learning, we can get students to be more involved in their educational processes.

Guideline Three (Kat, Amanda)

Guideline Four (Kelly S, Nick)

Using Students as Technology Experts

         <The process of teaching peers how to use technology can help students to solidify their own understanding of that technology. In giving the power and responsibility of teaching to students, the teacher shifts into the role of facilitator, overseeing and ensuring that students stay focused on learning objectives. By allowing students to be teachers themselves, the teacher helps students to see themselves as experts and generators of knowledge (Zull, 2002; Engle, 2006). This can increase students’ intrinsic motivation and sense of self-worth. By working as both teachers and learners, students can see that they are part of a broad community of knowledge that is actively growing and changing. Students who use assistive technology (possibly because of special needs) might gain status and be further integrated into the classroom community by serving as experts in their particular technology; this might also normalize assistive technology and decrease the stigma that is sometimes associated with its use. Also, by using students as technology experts, the teacher can set up opportunities for students to make their own connections between their interests and academic goals, while providing additional entry points to content.>

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/.

etc




Part One


INDIVIDUAL INSIGHTS

Part Two


EMERGING THEMES

Part Three


POWERFUL USES OF TECHNOLOGY