After renga posted a provocative video on preparing students for the 21st century, bloggers saw the need to think about how to integrate technology into the classroom.
How do you integrate technology into your classroom? (Or how might you?)
Students:
computer time for literacy and math center time station
bloggging
making power points
webquests
visiting websites related to theme or book studied in class
AR tests
Teachers:
blogging on eledblog ; )
taking online courses
searching for lesson ideas
making webquests
Backwards?
I am reminded of an old chuckle: It took 15 years for the overhead projector to move from the bowling alley to the classroom. Deja vu?
I think the question of "how to integrate technology into the classroom" has it backwards. The classroom has got to be integrated into the technology of the 21st Century.
How often does integrating technology mean that we are using 21st Century technology to teach 19th Century skills?
The priority must be to teach our kids to survive in the 21st Century workplace. Why is there a priority on pencil over keyboard at a time when fine motor coordination is still developing and the workplace values word processing over calligraphy? Start a Kindergardener on a keyboard and compare that child to one using a pencil.
Using a pencil is not part of the creative process, so teach it separately from creative writing. A computer can facilitate writing more than a pencil.
Arithmetic has stood in the way of many a good mathematician.
Computational skills were essential in the 19th Century, but an easily automated skill using 21st Century tools. Why should arithmetic stand in the way of learning algebra or geometry? How many kids we label as math disabled are actually arithmetic disabled? I would start a K child on a spreadsheet as the basic tool for math independent of arithmetic. It can also be used to teach arithmetic and estimation.
How do we integrate the classroom into the technology of the 21st century?
Funding Reality
I personally advocate for citizens and people of good character before workers. Also students should really solidify their pencil grip by 1st or 2nd grade to avoid future difficulty.
However, the pencil versus computer question is unequivocally related to funding. Most schools all but run out of paper and pencils before the year is over. We cannot begin to integrate technology enough because we have too little at our disposal at many schools. If we had even eight computers in every classroom or roughly a 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 ratios, students would be more engaged and motivated, gain more mastery and it would make our jobs easier. In addition to the limited access to computers, we have limited opportunities for relevant training in technology. We have a limited number of opportunities to get training from the district, limited income to pay for training and many things to be trained in --the new reading, writing and math curriculum, and Science and Social Studies when you change grade levels. I think the answer is simple, we need more funding for technology and training, more professional development days/less student days, and 1 computer for every 3 students.
What about Science? Let's get a Science teacher in every elementary school and labs in sufficient number at all schools. We know Science is the future, but we expect generalists to teach it until middle school. Strength in Science will help create informed citizens and get our children ready for the future workplace.
Fund education better please. And no thank you on extending the regular school year; extend the summer session for students who need it --the one's who aren't at standard, have exceptional needs and are still at a low level of English proficiency.
Tough question to answer...
I am currently taking graduate courses at Walden University. The focus of my master's program is Integrating Technology into the Classroom. You bring up an interesting point I was thinking about as I started my third course yesterday, Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society. Should the focus of educators really be on trying to integrate technology into the classroom, or do we need to be thinking how can classrooms be integrated into the technolgy that is here right now?
As I speak with my 5th grade students who are ten and eleven years old, it is amazing to see the amount of knowledge they have in reference to the world of technology. They have this knowledge of technology because they have grown up with unlimitied amounts of technological resources. It sounds funny for me to be saying this being that I am only 25 years old, but I was not exposed to the the vast amounts of technology at such a young age. Sure I had a computer, but there was no Internet, blogging sites, wiki's, SmartBoards, etc. We used the three or four computers that were to be shared by 130 students to type documents and play games. It was not until I was in middle school that the Internet and its vast amounts of resources began to explode around the world. Though I consider myself to be rather tech savvy, I feel many of my students know more about technology and its advantages in the educational field than I do, because they grew up with everything right at their fingertips.
After reflecting on my perception of incorporating technology during my first two years as a full time educator, I feel that I have been using 21st century technology to present 19th century material and skills. I feel that I may be just using newer ways to teach the same old concepts. Though school districts may be behind the times and crawling along to keep up with new advances in technology, it is up to individual classroom teachers to have the initiative to want to incorporate the infinite number of resources that are available. The reason I started my graduate studies was to find new ideas and strategies to help keep my classroom up to date with the ever growing world of technology.
I hope to find ways to integrate my classroom into the technology of the 21st century.
High Yielding Technology
Hi,
As a twenty-something teacher, I am often surprised by my elementary students' ability to troubleshoot technology problems and by their high level of familiarity with all sorts of technology (games, phones, blogging communities, etc.) I am especially surprised by this given the high number of free and reduced lunch students at my school, around 80%.
While I agree that it is up to us teachers to take initative to incorporate technology as an instructional tool, I believe we have some real barriers. Namely, we have too few computers for students to use and too much curriculum to "cover". At my school we typically have three computers in a classroom. Many of our classrooms have 27 students, even in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade!
Since we have such a need to teach small groups --guided reading, reteaching math concepts and skills, I see computers as a tool for independent work. I have first graders use starfall.com or tumblebooks. I have older students use Read Naturally, a repeated reading, fluency program. I would however like to integrate technology in new and engaging ways.
My husband and I --the founders of ElEdBlog-- have considered using the group function for a classroom blogging community. My only concern is that using the internet is so delicate and SO permanent that I wouldn't know how to do it without having a problem. We at least don't have ads and certainly nothing inappropriate....until we get a spammer posting on the site. Who wants to risk their neck to share a little technology? Like, "hey, your kid knows about youtube now. Unfortunately, they also have a graphic picture of ___(fill in the blank)."
My other concern is that my students should be engaged in reading for as close to 90 minutes a day as possible. I don't want to get them too busy with responding to reading, be it on paper or blog. I do like the idea of reading student work from the internet though.... I could be sitting in bed with my laptop and working....hum, this could be a plot to make me work ever more. Maybe, I don't like the idea ;-)