Week 2
Chap 1-3 3 Questions Chapter 1 Question 3. Question 3: The number of technology tool available to teachers is already daunting, and more are emerging every day. Given the value of these tools to enliven and support 21st century learning, what will you do to keep yourself informed about the options available to you? How will you manage your discoveries and work toward integrating them into your classroom? Technology in the classroom has never been more important than today. The kids of today are totally immersed in technology. Technology is central to their social lives, their fun activities and should also be central in how they receive material in today’s 21st Century classrooms. Many teachers, like myself, are technology immigrants, meaning these technologies were not even envisioned when we were children. But we “technology immigrants” cannot allow that to be an excuse for not using technology to engage our students. Most school districts now are putting serious resources into technology. Google classroom, Canvas, Webpages, smart instructional boards are common in most classrooms now. What still remains uncommon is teachers utilizing these resource as they should be utilized. The technology is there, what remain is the will to use it. Of course, there are serious obstacles to the use of these technologies besides the knowledge and inclination to do so. Change is difficult and for many the time required to change the method and style of instruction after many years is a large hurdle indeed. In many instances the administration itself does not make use of technology a school priority, so we all just go along as we have been. Of course, that must change. We must embrace these technologies in order to not only engage our students but to prepare them for a world in which use of these same technologies will be an everyday affair. So how will we learn what technologies are available to us, and what will we do to integrate these technologies into our classroom instruction? This class is a great start. In Technology in Education we are exposed to various technologies and are given a vision for how to implement these into our instruction. We can also spend time with our district’s technology department. They love to talk about the tools they provide and even what their plans for future technology additions are. Another great resource is the district curriculum directors. They tend to be research oriented and up to date on new technologies and the strategies to use them. So let us put in the time required. I plan to experiment with flipped classroom. I plan to have one unit per semester as a test case. I plan to explain it to students, parents and administrators in preparation and expect no opposition. I plan to more heavily utilize our teacher websites as a communication tool for parents as well as students. Chapter 2 Question 21. Different students have different learning styles and their learning styles influence their learning. As a teacher, you should understand your students learning styles when preparing for classes. Discuss your understanding on different learning styles and its influence on learning. Learning styles refer to the way in which and the conditions under which we learn the best. Learning styles are individual, we each have our own preferred learning style. Learning Styles are broken down into three primary ways of learning, auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Auditory learners thrive and learn through listening and speaking. Auditory learners tend to think through things before speaking and in doing so can reach a deeper level of understanding of the material. They enjoy hearing the material explained and also benefit from discussing material or making a presentation. Visual learners need to see the material to take it in through visual senses. For these learners the material hits home best under these conditions. Visual learners like to read material and also see a task demonstrated. The kinesthetic learner learns by doing. This learner is a true hands-on learner. These learners prefer to see it in action and can have trouble visualizing it until they get their hands on it, then it becomes clear for them. School districts have good classification tools available so that we can know the preferred learning style of each of our students. I say the preferred style because we can all learn in all different ways and should use all different ways. We all just tend to do better in our preferred learning style. As teachers we know we will have all three learning styles in our classroom and need to keep that in mind as we prepare lesson materials. Auditory learner enjoy lecture and discussion. A recorded lecture on the teacher website is an excellent tool for these learners as they can go back and listen to explanations and material presentation over and over again. Having auditory learners prepare presentations and teach-back material is effective for these learners. For visual learners, PowerPoint slide decks are great, full of charts and graphs and pictures. Labs and interactive simulations are where kinesthetic learners thrive and can have hands-on activities. Chapter 3 Question 1Instructional planning is a skill every educator at every grade level must master. To integrate technology into instruction, a logical, sequential approach is needed to help teachers to clarify which technologies are most useful and at what points they should be included in the process. Discuss Design-Plan-Act (DPA) system – what it is, how the three distinct planning components of DFA differ, and why it is helpful to use a system approach to integrate technology? Instructional planning is the task every teacher must perform and the skill with which we do so often decides the quality of our lessons and directly affects outcomes. The Design-Plan-Act system (DPA) is an organizing approach to instructional planning that allows teachers to break down a unit of material into sequential lessons to achieve required learning objectives. This logical, sequential approach also gives teachers the ability to choose technologies that are appropriate to the lessons. 1. Design – Breaking down the instructional unit into the content we will teach and sequence in which we will do so. 2. Plan – Breaking down units into daily lesson plans in a sequential fashion. This is the most detailed step where teachers will choose the teaching and literacy strategies and technologies to be used. 3. Act - Develop an instructional action for each daily lesson DPA is a very organized approach to unit planning and give teachers the ability to break down units into logical, sequential steps. Inside this approach teachers can choose technologies that fit the overall plan.
2 Comments
Saiva Baker
6/22/2019 04:46:07 am
John,
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Gary Lee
7/23/2019 12:29:53 pm
John, I agree with you that technology is now more used than ever in classrooms. Today's students will never live in a world that does not have a piece of technology around them. Therefore, we as teachers must adapt and learn to meet the needs of these students. I understand that this is not probably the most popular idea with teachers who have been teaching for years or the older generations. But at the end of the day we must do what is best for the students of today. Adapting and learning something new can be challenging but it is worth it for the way education is adapting today.
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