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Educators live in such an exciting time in education. Today, educators are no longer tasked with teaching computer skills, but are rather tasked with how to prepare students to be 21st century learners and workers. Former Secretary of Education Richard Riley made a case for this complicated undertaking when he stated that, “we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet.” Technology in the classroom must be used to expand students’ knowledge base in a way that would be impossible without its use.
As an educator, I have had the privilege of working in one-to-one classrooms since 2010. Not only I fully embrace technological integration in the classroom, I always actively seek out new resources and ways to infuse technology into my lessons. I graduated with a Masters of Arts Degree in Teaching Leadership from Saint Mary's College of California in 2018. For my Action Research Project, I chose to focus on technology in the classroom, allowing me to dedicate one year of research on this topic.
Through my research, I discovered that simply adding technology to a lesson does not guarantee to make the learning more accessible to students. In order to use technology to achieve the largest impact in student learning, the following must be taken into consideration:
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Adding the correct educational technologies into the lesson design is crucial for student growth
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Allowing students to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the concept when using a technology-based unit
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Self-pacing units so struggling students can make greater gains with technology
Technology also has many implications for my practice.
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It allows me to easily gather a plethora of data that informs my instruction daily
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It allows me to provide feedback to students more quickly
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It allows me to listen to more students' voices
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Here are some examples of how I apply technology in my classroom:
Presentations: Students learn to develop presentations using Keynote in the iPads and Google Drive presentations. They create sound tracks using Garage Band and add their own photography into the presentations. Once ready, students practice presenting their work to small groups or to the whole classroom.
Essays with Collaboration: Most of our writing assignments are created using Google Drive. This tool enables for easy collaboration with peers, different grades, and with me. I can easily add notes and communicate with individual students without having to ignore the rest of the class.
Informational Text: Students use Achieve 3000 to read and interact with informational articles in their Lexile levels. The system allows students to take a poll to create interest in the subject, to complete a close reading (students take notes online or on paper while reading the article), to answer comprehension questions, and to create a writing response based on a prompt. Although Achieve 3000 is a paid resource, other resources such as Newsela are free and deliver a similar process.
Class collaboration and publishing: Want to take a quick poll? An exit ticket? Have students share a short answer and have all others vote on the best response? I use Socrative to accomplish all of those tasks and more. Whenever I want my students to post a response and have other students see it, I use Padlet or Google Drive.
Online testing: Most of my tests are delivered online. Since I currently use Go Math, I have access to the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Think Central website. All of my Math tests are taken through this website, which provides immediate feedback and grades to the student. For other tests, I use That Quiz. This free website is one of my favorites! I can create tests that include multiple choice questions and short/essay answers. The multiple choice questions are corrected and the grade is displayed immediately for the students. I can also easily e-mail a copy of the corrected test to the parents.
HyperDocs: I often assign HyperDocs for my students, and use Padlet or EdCanvas to share the resources I want them to use.
Math: Homework that is corrected and give the students immediate feedback - IXL and Mathletics. I also have experience using Dreambox - an online resource that delivers math concept lessons based on adaptive learning. National Library of Virtual Manipulatives is also a great way to display visuals while teaching concepts.
iPad apps: We often use Trading Cards to create interactive cards for different subjects. Chirp is utilized to share items between iPads. Meanwhile, social studies get a boost from the Stack the States app, a fun way to learn about the states, and the European Exploration: The Age of Discovery app.
And many more!!