21st Century Edu.World

We’re Watching You… I used to feel like when I was lucky enough to test out new hardware and software in my classroom, that my bosses were watching me to see what I was doing with it.  You know, that whole business concept of “getting a return on an investment.”  At first I would panic and try to figure out how to create lessons centered around the technology.  It was almost like I felt technology first, lesson second.  I realized quickly that this thinking was backwards! Old School Becomes New School We used to (or still do) teach content and then write the assessment afterward based on the things we talked about.  Often times we don’t articulate a clear goal for our students or ourselves and we just “go with the flow.”  Current pedagogy highlights the advantage of creating an assessment first based on state standards, essential learnings, learning objectives, etc. and then creating a unit around that which emphasizes what is to be assessed for understanding.  The reason being that if clear standards are set and fulfilled, this will lead to increased student achievement.  This is called backward planning in some circles.  OK, so what’s the point?  The point is, that instead of thinking about how to create lessons centered around the technology - which I feel is synonymous to “just going with the flow” and not having real clear standards to fulfill in terms of integrating the technology, think about what you already do best in your classroom. 1) What are some teaching strategies you frequently use? 2) What are some best practices you employ on a consistent basis? 3) How have you reached your students in the past before you were given the technology and expected to work wonders with it? Once you have answered these question, you now have clear standards in which you can build around and begin to think about how to integrate your technology into your classroom. Just Do It You know what your good at and how you like to do things on a day-to-day basis in your classroom. Now think about the following questions to help you get started integrating the technology into some, most, or all facets of your instruction. 1) Are there possibilities of enhancing what you do with your technology? 2) Can you make certain processes, procedures more efficient using your technology? 3) Are there certain best practices you use that can be made more effective, efficient, and/or enhanced by having technology? If you’re having trouble answering these questions, I put forth that you worry more about what and how you do great things in your classroom, and if you have identified these, share them with your colleagues and/or if you have one, an Instructional Technology Coach, to see how they may use technology in their classrooms to do the same things and possibly help you innovate NEW ways to employ teaching strategies and best practices! Good luck, have fun, and remember that the “Instruction(al)” comes before the “Technology.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Philosophy.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.