Integration in 3000

Information technology has changed the face of education today. In the past, the teacher was the focus of information in the classroom. When technology is integrated in today’s classrooms, students are the focus and the creators, synthesizers and collaborators of massive amounts of information. I spent the past 3 years integrating technology in curricula from K-12 for North Penn School District. Technology is an actively engaging medium for instruction. It offers students immediate feedback and interaction on any level. Google offers a suite of applications that mimic Microsoft Office. A teacher can generate a Google form that collects student data and displays it automatically as the data is entered. The same activity can be conducted offline with a student response system. Students respond to a posted question using a hand-held device and the answers can be reported in a variety of formats. Integrating technology in this manner allows students to generate and synthesize their own data and solutions creating an authentic learning environment, providing teachers with quick formative assessment.

Integrated technology offers a high degree of differentiation. There is no wrong way of expressing creativity or mastery of a concept when the technology allows students to choose the format best suited to their learning styles. There are numerous web 2.0 applications that enable students to express their knowledge in a variety of media. Animated avatars, Prezi and Animoto are web based applications that actively integrate technology in any subject. Avatars are speaking animations that can be used to practice accents with foreign languages or give a book talk instead of a written review. Replace the textbook chapter on early explorers; students can research them and design an avatar to speak about their lives and discoveries. Prezi is a web based program that produces a dynamic presentation concentrating the focus through zoom and perspective to create impact on the audience with visuals and text. Animoto creates free, professional looking videos. This type of technology enables students to create a product that is professional in appearance and easy to use. The focus of these sites is content. The website produces the video. The most powerful point to integrating technology in all grade levels is to encourage early users and freedom of thought. Give students the tools and freedom to create what they know. As a technology integrator, my greatest success is to instill in students a craving for creativity beyond the norm.

Technology integration starts with teachers and administrators. It is not an addition to a lesson but a new way of organizing a lesson to fit the needs of students and content. Web 2.0 sites, Google, Microsoft Office, podcasting, multimedia projects and wikis are excellent tools to help shape original, perpetual digital natives that will communicate, collaborate and create for the real world.

I had 3000 characters to explain how information technology could be integrated into instruction and curriculum...it took two days and two people to pare down what could be said. We did not say it all, but we did scratch the surface.

Sometimes they just don’t know what they want.

“I want to do something fun with the computers” is a standard request in my job. So what do you make of that?

My first question back is “Well, what are you doing in your curriculum?” And more often than not, the teacher looks perplexed…the curriculum?

It isn’t the computers that make the learning fun. You know that right? It is the lesson created that should make the learning interesting and connected. The computers or laptops or minis are just a tool to extend that learning. Sometimes teachers just don’t know what they want.
Now let me take what you are actually doing in the classroom and make it 100% better, 100% related to the real world, 100% global if possible. Share your work. Collaborate and learn from someone else. Give up the power of instruction!

What happens when students generate their own problem and then solve it? They absolutely learn the objective of the lesson. They take creativity to a new level. They have the ability to design and implement if we give them the chance to do it. Don’t give them every requirement for a project. Give them only the means to achieve that product. Show them how to use some technology…how to collaborate on Google docs or edit a wiki or film a video and edit it in some software. Then let them choose how best to represent what they have learned. Would you rather grade 30 essays answering the same question in the same manner or would you rather grade projects that demonstrate an expansion of learning beyond the standard presented?
The idea is that if you are creating something that will represent your knowledge and understanding beyond the classroom that the end product will be better than what is produced for a rubric to be assessed by one person.

You don’t really want something fun to do on the computers, you want your students to enjoy learning and producing something that represents their skills and understanding beyond your classroom walls.

So what are you doing in your curriculum that expands your students’ learning experience?

Happy 2011 New Year.
This post is based on the quote by Randy Taran. The post refers to what we pay attention to grows. This new year a resolution of mine that is occupationally based is that I will pay attention to what is working and not focus so much on what is not working. I will focus on what teachers are doing with tech that is maybe an old practice done in a new way. I will focus on growing that old practice into a new practice done in a new way.

Many of the Elementary school teachers that we work with ask us for assistance with power point or excel or word. This is what they know, but they do not know it well enough to encourage their students to create using it. They want a new way to do an old practice. I come in and show them a new way to do vocabulary or a new way to display research findings or a new way to review unit content or a new way to discuss what was read that day. New ways are the seed. It is a good seed to plant. My focus will be sowing these little seeds so that other teachers will hear, "That was so easy to do. What else can we do?"

We have to start somewhere. Teachers have a small window of time for experimentation. Most teachers have zero time for experimentation, so it takes us, as coaches, to plant that seed of technology. To take that new way of doing something familiar and saying watch...and grow this. It can be done. You can do it. Your students will help you. We will help you. Let's focus on what can be done and is being done, no matter how small a step it is. Technology is more than just a new way of doing something old. It is growing in a direction that is new: a new way of instructing and a new way of learning.