PedTech

Have you ever been sitting at a professional development workshop on interactive whiteboards and wanted to run back to your classroom and use every possible application on the toolkit the very next day? Remember that great lecture using clickers you were a part of or the wiki you contributed to? It would be great to immediately implement them into your classroom instruction. Ms. Robson was showing similar symptoms. Here's her story....

// Ms. Robson teaches at a "laptop" magnet middle school. All her 6th grade students come to class with laptops which they keep with them all day and can take home.Ms Robson has decided that her students should document the history of their local area surrounding their school. The student learning outcomes include: knowledge of historical documentation; communinty awareness; interviewing skills; and writing skills and oral presentation skills. So she has created a lesson designed to obtain an "oral history" of their area. Each student has reviewed online biographies of community volunteers and officials, and selected a person to interview (including the mayor, the local historical society chair, the Chamber of Commerce president, and an elderly couple that has lived all their lives near the school). Ms. Robson has asked her students to draft interview questions using MS Word, exchange them for peer review with tracked changes with revisions and comments, until she approved each student's final copies. Final consensus is created by working on the smart board. Ms. Robson asks students to digitally record their interviews so students can edit audio clips using iMovie into powerpoint presentations.Ms. Robson has scheduled a day for students to present their work and have it broadcast on public access cable for the community to view, with a compilation published on the class website and an associated podcast. Ms. Robson has arranged for their "sister school" in China to complete the same project and exchange presentations using iSight webcams and classroom projection. //
 * [|View a sample online biography of the mayor.]
 * [|See a sample of a student's draft questions with Ms Robson's changes and comments].

If the professional development question or Ms. Robson's tale sound familiar to you, may be suffering from "technology trance" ! As educators, many of us have done this. After learning about new technologies, we become excited and perhaps a bit overzealous in trying to throw “every technology and the kitchen sink” into a lesson, much like Ms. Robson does in her technology lesson.

But don't worry yet... there is a cure for your symptoms! It’s important to take a step back. STOP and THINK!
 * What is the most effective use of this technology?
 * How will it impact my teaching and my students’ learning?
 * How does technology enhance learning and not become the lesson in and of itself?
 * How will the use of this technology help me reach my goals and objectives?

**To prevent "technology trance" from happening in your classroom, here are some important points to consider:** domain understanding or pedagogical skill?** || //What benefits does this technology bring to teacher instruction and student learning?// //Could the lesson be taught as effectively using a less expensive medium? Could the lesson be taught without technology, or with less technology? // is "working"?** || //Before implementing technology to enhance lessons, the instructor should complete some type of formative evaluation to support what technology might work best for any given assignment.// students from having a more authentic real-world experience?** || //Technology should enhance the authenticity of learning, not detract from it.//
 * < **Use of time/productivity** ||
 * < **Enhancing the teacher's
 * Technology should be used as a tool to develop and enhance student understanding, not as a means to create student understanding. Teachers need to ensure that the technology that they have chosen to incorporate is enhancing their domain understanding or pedagogical skill, and that students have prior knowledge to draw upon while interacting with the technology.
 * The teacher must consider the most effective use of technology.
 * If a lesson could be taught in a more cost effective manner, then many educators believe they are obligated to use the least expensive tools. ||
 * < **Scientific some evidence that technology
 * The kinds of evaluations should include pre-surveys and post-surveys to assess the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors students have with the problem-based assignments, or project-based assignments similar to Ms. Robson's.
 * To avoid technology //being// the assignment and not enhancing the lesson, the instructor should also conduct comparison studies to evaluate whether or not another technological method would work best.
 * Assessments in technology's ability to enhance student understanding should be qualitative and quantitative to provide a complete analysis
 * Teacher should also self-assess the lesson based on lessons that do not utilize technological resources
 * A comparison class can be used to determine success levels of student understanding both with and without technology ||
 * < **Is technology preventing
 * Consider whether or not the media brings students closer to the real world.
 * Technology-based simulations or other media activities may not be worthwhile if a real-world equivalent is readily available.
 * Does the technology prevent the students from creating their own open-ended inquiries? ||
 * < **Danger that students might become addicted to media and less social in real life?** || //Ideally technology should supplement, not replace, real life social interaction.//
 * Does the use of technology replace real life social interaction? If so, is there a valid reason for doing so (ie. need for communication over distance or to speed up the exchange of information)?
 * Bear in mind that technology and media are important aspects of the workplace for many people, exposure to such in school is an authentic representation of situations students will encounter later in life. ||
 * < **Ethical, legal, or social concerns ?** || //Have you considered your legal, ethical and community obligations?//
 * Beginning with local, state or federal laws and your school's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), be sure that any implementation of technology meets all expectations concerning student safety.
 * If your project is available to the public on a website, be sure to consider any copyright issues. Any copyrighted material that usually is exempted for student projects no longer falls under the fair use umbrella.
 * Teacher must ensure that technological program is allowed to be used within the district by discussing his/her plans with administrators and obtaining permission
 * Any possible security measures on websites, programs and access must be taken to protect students
 * If a person’s face is recognizable in a video, you will need to obtain permission from the individual or his/her parent/guardian.
 * What precautions are being taken to ensure the safety of the 12 year old students who are collecting the various items for this project? ||

=**Here is the prescription to cure what ails Ms. Robson-**=

proficient or advanced** || Ms. Robson is on the novice level. teaching? Learning? Both?** || Technology is changing the learning slightly in the form of presenting the material that has been learned.
 * ~ ||~ [[image:prescription.jpg width="102" height="88" align="left"]] ||~  ||
 * < **Issues to Address** || **Positives/Negatives in Ms. Robson's Lesson** || **Suggested Practices to Improve/Enhance** ||
 * < **Novice, beginner,
 * According to CT State Teacher Technology Competencies, a developing teacher “integrates technology into the curriculum using learner-centered instruction and inquiry based learning.”
 * Ms. Robson has not achieved this level yet because the learning is not inquiry based.
 * She did not take into consideration the students’ needs, interests or background knowledge. She decided on the topics and assignments and left little room for student choice. || * Ms. Robson should collect data prior to the lesson to use in planning her instruction.
 * She should conduct a needs assessment to better structure the instruction to meet the needs of the students.
 * Ms. Robson should also find out the interests of the students and relate the lesson to them to make the lesson more authentic.
 * She also needs to better determine what outcomes she expects from the lesson, including: information concerning local history; interviewing skills; development of new literacies, etc. ||
 * < **Could money be better spent?** || * Ms. Robson's school district seems willing to spend money to purchase new technologies for their teachers and students to use. However, like many other districts, they have not allocated funds or time for the proper training teachers need in order to use this technology effectively. Before considering new technology, there should be an investigation as to how the technology will improve the learning. Is there more than one tool that can achieve the same goals? Are there any service/maintenance implications to consider? || * The district could have spent the money on effective technology training before implementing the use of laptops in the classroom.
 * The use of in house trainer (teachers or students) provides the opportunity for training and then follow up questions once implementation has begun.
 * It would have been better to start small with one new tool, for example a Smartboard per classroom and training to accompany this technology.
 * Effective training with this material could show how the tool could effectively be used to provide classroom access to real-world situations. ||
 * < **Is this use of technology changing
 * The use of audio clips acknowledges students with physical/cognitive learning disabilities, as we saw in the presentation in class this summer with students completing book reports through podcasts.
 * Some activities are involving "new literacies" for students to communicate online, beyond text and poster boards.

Other than the changes mentioned above, there are not many changes to the teaching and learning.
 * Most of the learning objectives in the lesson could be accomplished through basic means- the presentation through a poster project, etc.
 * The application of tech is not saving the teacher any time or making her more productive.
 * This project may actually take the teacher more time to conduct if she needs to first teach students how to use the technology they are being required to incorporate. || * Mrs. Robson could have had her students discuss in a wiki or google chat about their research findings. Students could have exchanged ideas about not only biographies but articles written in local newspapers (researched on the internet), old town photos and stories, etc…
 * The opportunity to share information with sister school in China could have brought a rich topic for them to work on. Comparisons and connections could have made between the two countries.
 * Assessing new literacies and skills students already have (as it relates to the technology that will be utilized for this project) and what would need to be taught could help Ms. Robson organize her time and the lesson more appropriately. ||

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