Author: Maeve Olson

These past six weeks have been an interesting look into what it could mean to teach a class with the intentional decision to integrate technology to the best of your capabilities.

One of the most important things I’ve learned from this experience has been the importance of combining your content, your pedagogy, and your technology, in a way that will be impactful and memorable for your students. Here’s a quick online video to help describe this concept of TPCK:

The availability and capabilities of technology, however, can vary from state to state, and district to district. Finding ways to be creative with technology is important. Being an advocate for educational technology is also important. Let’s advocate for the future of our students to be smart, talented, and technologically savvy, as they will be tomorrow’s leaders in what is quickly becoming a very technologically centered and globally connected society.

I-pads fill many of our classrooms today. Technology is everywhere, and many school districts are evening the playing field for students by making sure that everyone has equal access to individualized technology today. This access and interaction with technology is crucial, but is it hurting our classrooms?

There are many advantages to having 1:1 technology within our classrooms. Providing a student with this individualized technology not only gives each and every child the same access to technology, but also encourages a curiosity to learn more about computers and technology in general. The more exposure students have to cutting-edge technology, the more they will be curious and wonder about what may be possible in the future.

There are, of course, some disadvantages as well. Namely, keeping order within the classroom while these 1:1 technology devices can be distracting is a huge issue for many teachers. There are, however, strategies and expectations that can be put into place to help students focus on tasks at hand and to help them engage with material more during each activity. One such suggestion is to collect the I-pads when moving on to a new activity. Another idea is to give students more time to self-teach themselves using the technology at their tips.

The tricky part for teachers to find out as they begin organizing their classrooms each year will be: how can we best utilize our 1:1 technology within the classroom in order to optimize student learning each day? I think this is a question that will need to be continually addressed by the very best teachers.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how education has evolved, is evolving, and could continue to evolve in the years to come. However, there are a lot of figures to take into account. Here are just a few I’ve thought of:

Between how a classroom is physically set-up, how a teacher presents information, and how technology is used, there are a lot of opportunities to either fail miserably by not connecting with a student at all or else succeed exponentially by finding and drawing upon a student’s maximum potential. (There is, however, one topic I did not include on this map – content. Content is something that has a pretty good system of checks and balances. Our curriculum is constantly being challenged and critiqued.)

In America today, we are at an interesting spot for analyzing and changing our education systems. With the advancements of technology and globalism, this will only continue to progress. Plenty of leaders are taking notice of this and asking students, teachers, politicians, and even Hollywood to take action! Here is one program, called the Super School Project, I’ve just found recently, working to change the idea of the high school classroom.

In thinking about my own future in teaching, I know I would like to be more student-centered than teacher-centered. This will take more work, and more intentional thought, but I think I’m up for the challenge! Maybe this Text2Map technology can help me organize my thoughts some more… check it out and see if it’s helpful to you!

There are endless online tools available to teachers and educators today. While some resources and software are required for the professional field, there are many others than can also be incorporated to help create an engaging and interactive lesson for your students.

The following list is compiled of some tools and online media that I’ve found to be interesting and useful. How you interact and maximize these resources in your classroom, however, is up to you! I’ll be exploring some of these online tools in future blog posts and hope to uncover some additional resources as I continue to learn more about incorporating technology into the classroom!

Additionally, if you come across any other note-worthy educational resources or tools (or educational blogs – see my first post about recommendations!), please feel free to send them my way and I can update this page with more resources as they come in!

Online Tools (in no particular order):

• http://www.twitter.com
• http://www.youtube.com
• http://www.quizlet.com
• http://search.creativecommons.org/
• https://www.text2mindmap.com/
• http://www.vimeo.com
• http://www.wordle.net/
• http://www.prezi.com
• http://www.techsmith.com (Camtasia, Snagit)
• http://www.pollev.com
• https://www.freesound.org/
• http://www.videoscribe.co/
• Moodle vs. Blackboard vs. Canvas vs. Schoolology vs. D2L
• Flipgrid
• Weebly (.edu use)

Food for Thought (in no particular order):

• https://youtu.be/XVQ1ULfQawk
• https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U
• https://prezi.com/lfxedwuyzbca/gems-professional-development/
• https://youtu.be/FagVSQlZELY
• https://youtu.be/I2sD3K3daq8
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd0grLQ4voU
• http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/coach_gs_teaching_tips/2012/08/the_effect_of_affect_1.html

There are many online sites that have excellent resources, activities, and ideas listed for teachers and educators. I’ve often heard many times that “you don’t have to re-create the wheel!”

The following list is compiled of some links that I’ve found to be interesting and useful. I’m not fully endorsing all of the content on these sites (as most of them I have only read certain sections or excerpts), but would like to compile a list of resources to refer to and point towards when exploring the world of education.

If you come across another fantastic educational blog (or educational resource/tool – see my second posting!), please feel free to send them my way and I can update this page with more resources as they come in!

Other Educational Blogs (in no order):

• http://www.kristenswanson.org/
• http://www.wesfryer.com/

Additionally, if you find your website is on this list and you would prefer for it not to be posted here, please contact me and I can revise the posting.

As technology continues to transform our world, it has new and differing impacts upon different industries at different times.

This is something I’ve already noticed in the workplace, and something that businesses especially are paying attention to. One example of this can be seen in this TED article.

These “8 Tips for Virtual Collaboration” include:

1. Review Your Tools
2. Invest In Videoconferencing
3. Get Together In-Person When You Can
4. Replicate The Elements Of A Normal Office
5. Have A Standing Meeting
6. Get A Room (For Everyone)
7. Set Expectations For Teleconference Behavior
8. Everyone Gets A Hotspot

Although these tips are referring to an office setting, I think there are some similar ideas that can be applied to high school teaching settings. Incorporating technology into the classroom and assigning virtual homework can apply to these ideas.

In doing a pre-assessment of your students during the beginning of the year, you can also assess the level of technological knowledge your students have achieved. This can be used as a good baseline for you as the teacher to introduce new technologies and build upon your students’ previous knowledge.

Incorporating your students’ previous technology knowledge with some at-home assignments or out-of-class projects can even develop into new technological advances. Today, working virtually is becoming a more broadly-accepted method of collaboration within the workforce; this means that it is likely that our students today will be working virtually once they enter the workforce themselves. If we can introduce this idea to them while in high school, we can better prepare our students for entering the workforce.

In response to my last reflection, I was recently asked by my professor, Derek Schwartz, “what place will the previous knowledge and experience of your students have in your teaching practice?”

This is a fantastic question for me to keep in mind in order to remain learner-focused.

Our students come to our classrooms with a wealth of knowledge and experience. This knowledge and experience can come from school, home, work, parents, siblings, friends, books, computers, social media, and a variety of other sources. We, as teachers, are fools if we decide to completely ignore this deep wealth of knowledge and experience that our students have brought with them into the classroom. However, it can also be scary to interact with the unknown. So, how can we best interact with that previous knowledge?

Media can be a fantastic outlet for students to use to express themselves. This can also help students become more media literate. In interacting with new media outlets, students can find more opportunities to “play around” with new media and learn how to use it appropriately. This gives them access and working knowledge on the technology.

Taking that one step further, if students are asked to present their media projects, it can bring their knowledge to the next level of understanding how and when that specific media could be used to communicate with others. The younger generations are using technology even more than those who came before them. While we may not be able to continuously be on top of the new technology (as it develops so quickly!), we can help foster a sense of technology responsibility, professionalism, and media literacy within our students.

There’s a common saying that humans, as creatures of habit, tend to “teach as we have been taught.”

This idea has been an interesting point of reflection for me as I’ve developed both personally and professionally. Coming from a sociology background (my undergrad major was Urban Development), I’ve often learned to use my past experiences as a way to connect to others.

Throughout my undergrad studies, I also began to understand the importance of incorporating best practices and common techniques that are unique to your industry in order to relate to others. In social services, this often comes from an understanding of commonly accepted “normal” child or adolescent development patterns and behaviors, as well as being able to distinguish “uncommon” development patterns or behaviors. Instead of solely relying upon a personal experience (which may or may not relate to the specific situation you are dealing with), there is a researched and best patterned way of accomplishing your goal.

This realization helped me realize that, despite both the bad and the good experiences I had with teachers growing up, there is a group of educators who is interested in finding the best method practices in teaching, and that this best method may be consistently changing.

This is especially true in discussing technology within the classroom. When I think about how I was taught, I realize that we did not even have some of the technological access that some students do in today’s world. As technology continues to grow, our teaching methods should also grow to encompass more and more of these technological advances.

As I left the computer lab after our first class earlier this week, I realized that there are almost endless possibilities when thinking about using technology to help foster a creative and engaging learning environment. Already, our current primary and secondary classrooms are using laptops, I-pads, Chromebooks, cell phones, SmartBoards, and other technology daily. Add to that a wide array of online tools that teachers can utilize to communicate new ideas to their students in order to engage them even further in the learning process, such as using Moodle, Skype, Quizlet, or Facebook groups, and one can already imagine a day when students learn entirely via technology. It is a scary thought, but it also brings us to the idea of wondering whether we are using technology effectively in a way that is hindering or, rather, hopefully furthering our objectives in the education process.

Effective teaching will actively engage the student in the process of learning about new material. One way to engage students is to be relevant. With technology changing so quickly all the time, it’s hard to stay relevant. However, one thing is certain: Teachers need to incorporate technology today. It’s almost not even a choice anymore. Instead of asking if you will incorporate technology into  your lesson plan, I think it’s almost easier, more productive, and more relevant to ask these kinds of questions when planning a new lesson:

1. What kind of technology will I be incorporating into this lesson?
2. At what time will I introduce the technology? How will I state the expectations of using this technology for today’s lesson (explaining what is acceptable/unacceptable in the classroom)?
3. Is this the best technology to be using for this lesson plan?

Another way to engage students is to encourage them to ask their own questions. When students are allowed to ask their own questions, they become a lot more interested in finding the answers. This can sometimes lead to small tangents or unexpected conversations, but, with the right mentoring guidance and perhaps a timely use of technology, beautiful lessons can occur.

In ending, I’ll leave with a TED talk that I found recently on sparking curiosity within our students as they learn. The presenter, a high school Chemistry teacher, uses PowerPoint, photos, videos, and sound clips, to make his presentation more appealing. However, the speaker, Ramsey Musallam, also warns that “if we place these technologies before student inquiry, we can be robbing ourselves of our greatest tools as teachers – our students’ questions.” Although incorporating technology into our teaching methods today is a must-have, we also need to think critically about what, when, where, why, and how we use that technology to best serve our ultimate goal of fostering a curiosity to learn within our students.