Describe a class room where “technology integration” takes place.
In Mrs. Gray’s eighth grade classroom at First Flight Middle School, technology has been seamlessly integrated into her classroom to help facilitate a functional and progressive learning environment. Once a week, on scienceThursdays, her students use a digital video camera to record and perform a short science demonstration which is then presented over the digital projectors to the entire school for part of the morning announcements. Once her class begins, every day starts with a few warm up questions to review the latest material over PowerPoint slides. Each day’s instruction varies, but they often have research to conduct before they begin a lab experiment. The class is broken into small groups. A typical class has 21-29 students in it. There are only 2 desktop computers in her classroom. Two of the groups use the desktops for their research. The other groups are allowed to use their smartphones. Not every student has a smartphone (because these are personal devices from home) but each group has at least one and there are generally three within the group. Anytime the students are broken into groups, they know the drill, pullout their phones and get right to work. Mrs. Gray also has the students use free science apps on their phoneslike goREACT, and Bill Nye the Science Guy app. The class also uses practical and relative technology for the class like a combo pH and EC meter for certain lab experiments. All of these devices help to create a student centered learning environment and helps the students achieve a complete understanding of the curriculum and prepare them for the future.
In your discipline area, what are the essential components in a classroom where "technology integration" is appropriately utilized? Why?
My subject area is Health and Physical Education. Technology integration is rarely used in the gym for physical education class except when we play a work out video over the digital projector for the class to follow along to. Technology is however very much integrated into the health classroom. All of the health lessons are put into PowerPoint and Prezi presentations that are embedded with relevant health videos and other links to graphs, charts, factsheets, nutrition labels and current news reportings. I only have one desktop computer in my classroom so I often allow them to use their smartphones in small groups to complete an assignment or work on a project. One example of a project they complete with their smartphones is writing their own ideal food consumption guidelines for one week. After a brief introduction on nutritional foods, they are to use their smartphones to formulate a dietary guideline for one week that is healthy in relation to their weight, calorie, protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals,and water consumption. They also use their smartphones to record surveys conducted during and outside of school with people about the related healthtopic of the week. They are to condense their recordings, and then analyze their findings and we discuss them as a class. This type of technology integration helps me to keep the health class informative and in sync with curriculum standards, while also relevant to the health aspects that affect them the most.
What instructional outcomes are possible when embedding technology in classroom instruction?
When technological, pedagogical,and content knowledge are properly combined to integrate technology seamlessly within the classroom, an open-ended student centered dynamic learning environment is created. The standard classroom material is covered while teaching other useful skills like problem solving, thinking outside the box, working well with others, and practical technology use. The best possible outcome is seamless integration where “students are not only using technology daily, but have access to a variety of tools that match the task at hand and provide them the opportunity to build a deeper understanding of content” ("What is successful," 2007). This deeper understanding allows students to retain the information for a much longer period of time and use the information accordingly outside of school to become more well-rounded, intelligent and productive people.
In Mrs. Gray’s eighth grade classroom at First Flight Middle School, technology has been seamlessly integrated into her classroom to help facilitate a functional and progressive learning environment. Once a week, on scienceThursdays, her students use a digital video camera to record and perform a short science demonstration which is then presented over the digital projectors to the entire school for part of the morning announcements. Once her class begins, every day starts with a few warm up questions to review the latest material over PowerPoint slides. Each day’s instruction varies, but they often have research to conduct before they begin a lab experiment. The class is broken into small groups. A typical class has 21-29 students in it. There are only 2 desktop computers in her classroom. Two of the groups use the desktops for their research. The other groups are allowed to use their smartphones. Not every student has a smartphone (because these are personal devices from home) but each group has at least one and there are generally three within the group. Anytime the students are broken into groups, they know the drill, pullout their phones and get right to work. Mrs. Gray also has the students use free science apps on their phoneslike goREACT, and Bill Nye the Science Guy app. The class also uses practical and relative technology for the class like a combo pH and EC meter for certain lab experiments. All of these devices help to create a student centered learning environment and helps the students achieve a complete understanding of the curriculum and prepare them for the future.
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