Technology Integration

This is Google Earth is free, works on both Macs and PCs, and takes only a couple of minutes to download from the Google Earth Web site. With a magnification tool powerful enough to complete one continuous zoom from an altitude of 38,000 miles to as low as 25 feet, and an ever-expanding network of related resources, it’s a practically limitless teaching tool!!

On the most superficial level, Google Earth can teach students about geography, distance (MATH), and topography. Starting from the basic Google Earth interface, students can type in any location on the computer.  They can save their favorite places by using a “placemark.”  Students usually start small…they type in their address or school.  They notice the rivers, roads, houses, and other things in the surrounding area.  You can listen to students share there traveling experiences with one another, where they would like to go, and things they would like to discover.

That is the beauty of it. Looking at the world with this much scope and detail, it’s hard not to notice, for instance, that cities are often nestled in the bends of rivers, between mountains, near airports etc.

“It has kids make realizations based on observations they make,” says Aidan Chopra, an education program manager at Google, “and that’s really the gold standard in education. There are no conclusions in Google Earth; there are trillions of pieces of information out there that students can use to form their own conclusions. A good teacher can then build on those observations and guide them to meet the class’s learning objectives.”

Almost any academic subject has a connection to geography, Chopra adds. “If I were teaching literature,” he says, “I wouldn’t just have the students write essays about what they’d read; I would have them create placemarks, maybe make an audiovisual tour of where the events took place, to give them some concreteness. Let’s map out Paul Revere’s ride. Where did these Civil War battles take place? What distinguished Northern geography from the South?”

For students who don’t respond well to verbal information, Google Earth creates a new kind of classwork and problem-solving method. “Say you’re doing a section on distance and you’re learning miles per hour and systems of measurement,” says Chopra. “You can give a kid a word problem and say, ‘A train went 6 miles in three hours; how fast was it going?’ Other kids might want to make a diagram. So I might say, ‘Go to Paris, and measure the Champs Elysées. Now, find out how long it took Lance Armstrong to do the Tour de France, and then tell me, how long would it take him to get down the Champs Elysées?’”

And when those few precious educational dollars are spent, Doering adds, it’s critical to keep looking forward. “Where should we invest our money?” he asks. “Should we invest it in textbooks, so that students will have access to outdated information a year from now? We need to invest in what is going to provide students with the tools that they will need in the future. And we need to invest in pedagogy to enable teachers to use them.”

Google Earth
Here’s where you can download Google Earth and find out more about its capabilities.   

I found this article…Singaporean Researcher, S. L. Muthukumar 

The Internet is a complex repository containing a huge maze of information from a variety of sources. It has become a prominent source of information for many people worldwide. The Internet wave has also hit the educational landscape in many big ways. The use of technologies such as the Internet as a teaching tool in schools is not the issue now since it is pervasively used. Rather, the issue is how to effectively employ such technologies and harness fully the new opportunities created by them to promote positive student learning experiences. 

Schools need to consider how technology-based instructional programs are mounted to ensure that students use the Internet efficaciously as a learning tool for various authentic learning activities such as conducting research on a given topic or finding relevant information for an assignment. Bruce and Levin (1997) posit that the Internet can be viewed as providing the following three basic types of tools in the educational domain: 

· Tools for inquiry
· Tools for communication
· Tools for construction 

In providing tools for inquiry, the Internet facilitates finding sources of information appropriate to a task, working to understand the information resources and how they relate to the task, and if possible applying this understanding in a productive way. The Internet enhances students’ knowledge acquisition by facilitating students’ access to resources from the outside world including experts in the field, as well as interacting directly with them. Thus exposure to real life contexts of the external world trains the students to face the uncertainties of the ever-changing outside world. 

In providing tools for communication, the Internet is a remarkable tool for rapid communication. Such communication can be both synchronous and asynchronous and takes on many forms such as e-mail, mailing lists, newsgroups, chat and videoconferencing. Such interaction involves communication with students and professionals in distant places, cultures and traditions as well as facilitating teachers to be in touch with other teachers. 

In providing tools for construction, the Internet promotes learning by scaffolding varieties of authentic learning activities for students. Through these activities the Internet also supports the development of students’ higher-order thinking skills. For example students are able to demonstrate their conceptual understanding by constructing products such as web pages. In these activities learners regulate their individual learning progress according to their own experiences and expertise. Learners can access a wealth of resources at their own pace and have meaningful interactions with the content information. For instructional activities, the Internet also has the added advantage of being adaptable for both individual and cooperative learning. 

Though offering a myriad of pedagogical benefits, there are also a number of caveats that educators need to bear in mind in their attempts to employ the Internet as a teaching aid. Being aware of possible pitfalls in conducting Internet based lessons, teachers would then be able to invest in proper planning to ensure that the learning experience for their students is a meaningful and stimulating one. Students often go straight to the Web without waiting for guidance from a teacher or librarian. This results in students having a difficult time navigating the Web and locating appropriate information relevant to the tasks in their homework. 

Students may also not differentiate between authentic web sites and sites that contain biased and inaccurate information but masquerade as being reliable. Schools are thus faced with the challenge of teaching the students not just the power of having a wealth of information at one’s fingertips in the Internet but also proper evaluation skills. 

Besides being cognizant of the strengths and shortcomings of conducting Internet-based lessons for students, teachers need to consider practical constraints that might otherwise hinder the desired implementation of these lessons. Time is one barrier to the extensive use of the Internet as students may be unable to spend a specific block of time on the Internet due to limitations in availability of computers with Internet access in schools. 

In the knowledge based economies of today, it is critical to be able to search for and retrieve information from the Web. Locating appropriate information on the Internet requires a variety of skills such as the ability to use Internet tools (e.g. search engines), having knowledge of search techniques (e.g. browsing through an information tree) and ability to execute the search (Carroll, 1999). 

Effective use of the Internet to glean relevant information requires the ability to apply Boolean logic rules (e.g., and, or), an understanding of how information is organized, critical thinking skills that allow the searcher to make informed choices, and a working knowledge of Internet notations. One needs to have abilities such as searching for information, scanning and skimming information, and strategies such as planning, monitoring and evaluating in executing the search. 

In conclusion, the Internet has been beneficial in the educational domain as a repository of gargantuan amounts of rich information. However schools, educational policy makers, and instructional/curriculum designers who intend to employ the Internet as a learning tool in their instructional programs must bear in mind and highlight to students the fact that just not any piece of information found on the net can be accepted as being authentic. 

Thus it is imperative that students be taught a wide range of internet literacy skills from verifying the veracity of content hosted by the Internet to seeking for information by using various search strategies and techniques. This will help to ensure that the true potential of the Internet as a learning aid is properly tapped to inject greater vigor into teaching practices in schools. 

Critical Questions

How can technology help you personalize learning?

How can technology engage multiple intelligences?

How can technology bridge the digital divide in K-12 settings?

How can technology assist the unique learner?

Possible Actions

Encourage students to use the web as a research tool on a topic of great personal interest. Give parameters for the expected product, but let the student emerge as chief designer.

Review your favorite on-line educational game or activity. List the intelligences a student would have to tap to do well. Create a multiple intelligence rubric for the piece.

Create an extended learning program which focuses on on-line learning activities that could be used to “reteach” skills which students missed in class.

Identify software/on-line learning activities which can be used to accommodate a learner with unique learning capacities.

I recently presented at a workshop on Math and Technology Integration.  The beliefs of the teachers present ranged from “traditional beliefs” to “I’m mixed”, to “Constructivism,” to “I’m not sure what I really believe.”  As teachers, we should have a solid, firm belief on the reasons why we teach the way we do.  Not to mention that the teachers’ beliefs about math/technology can and does have an impact on both their teaching and their students’ beliefs.  A childs’ affective domain (belief, attitudes, and emotions) is (to some degree) in the hands of teachers.  

After attending a workshop myself on the Future of Math and listening to how important it is for our children to be prepared for middle school and high school, I asked myself…what about the students NOW?   How they act/believe in the future (outcome) is what their attitude/belief and emotions are at a younger age (usually).  As a parent, I want my child to understand the math when he sits behind a computer so he can explain and intrepret his data/graph. I started my presentation from this perspective. How do your students feel about math now?  Are they confident?  Do they see the importance of math?  Are they afraid of it?  Frustrated?  I asked my son to type why he thought math was important/what he needs math for and how he uses it.  (Why Math Is Important To Me.doc )  Once I went over his thoughts, I explained that he feels confident in what he is doing…not always right but not afraid.   Because of this, his effort, motivation, and ability will present itself in his achievement.  If students are expected to memorize and play software games that are drill and practice, they are seeing someone else’s perspective.  They have not created or constructed their own.  Therefore, they have not made math connections to their lives.  Once a student has acquired an understanding for certain standards/lessons/concepts, then technology can be used for solving problems.  At this point, students become more mathematically empowered and gain a confidence that students may never achieve in a traditional math classroom.  Technology also provides a means for students to create, adapt, and experiment with representation in order to develop and communicate their knowledge.  Students need to communicate their mathematically understading constantly.

As much as I love technology…math is not always about calculators and computers. 

To integrate technology into education successfully, everyone must be involved and accept the following principles:

1.  Technology is important.  It is our future.

2.  Technology involves more than computers.

3.  There’s no such thing as failure.

4.  Stop asking how to integrate and start asking how students learn.  Don’t force technology into the curriculum.  Examine ways to teach and apply technology. 

5.  If it works, make it work better.

6.  Support must be universal.  Incorporate training.  Training must be available anytime, anywhere.

To Blog or Not to Blog…That is the Question

Technology integration means a lot of things to a lot of people. Below are examples:

  “I use the computer and game software in my class as a reinforcement of skills we have covered.”
  “Students in my class are required to advertise for events using Microsoft Publisher.”
  ”Students use the Internet to find information for their reports.” 

  “Students play math games.”

  “Students create movies.”

  “Students blog.”
  “All of my students must turn in their essays in word-processed form.”
  “I use PowerPoint to make presentations to/for my class.”  “Students also create their own presentations.”
Are these examples of technology integration? One might argue that each of these examples integrates technology. But…the real issue is not if technology is used in the classroom, the issue is whether or not technology is enhancing the learning in some way. Below are three simple questions to ask yourself when trying to determine technology’s worthiness in a given lesson or situation.

1. Is the lesson content worthwhile? (Are there clear objectives, connected to standards. real-world aplications, or significant questions, etc.)
2. Do the lesson activities engage students?
3. How does technology enhance the lesson in ways that would not be possible without it?
4. You may notice that of these three questions, only one actually deals with technology. The first two are about good teaching. Without good content and teaching, technology is somewhat irrelevant.

The technology-related question is quite challenging for many educators. Of the eight sample ways teachers integrate technology mentioned above, how many of those could provide positive answers to our questions? Does the teacher that has her class use the Internet for research ask significant questions of students in their research, or are students searching the internet for information more easily and readily found in a book in the school’s media center? Are the PowerPoint presentations students create about assigned countries simply reproductions of paper-and-pencil versions, or do they allow presentation of the material in a way that aids in conveying the information? What is technology integration? It is all about good teaching. Educators that are integrating technology well into their classes don’t just use it for the sake of saying they did. These skilled professionals use technology tools when appropriate, to make the content more meaningful, interesting, understandable, and real for their students.

WHAT IS A BLOG? (A Virtual Learning Community))

A blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public reading. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.  Online communication tools enable students to interact with curriculum content, the teacher, and their peers outside of the classroom. Students are given the opportunity to negotiate the meaning of content through these interactions – creating the potential for a deeper and longer lasting learning. 

Fundamental principles of constructivism support this view:

*learning is an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge
*individuals learn through interaction with their world
*individuals develop knowledge through social interactio

IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY IN A MATH CLASSROOM

The amount of available information is doubling every three years according to statistics. By the time kids graduate from high school, today’s students will have been exposed to more information than their grandparents were in a lifetime. It has been claimed that ninety percent of the technology we will use in the next decade has not been invented or currently there is no access to at the moment.

Education leaders have recognized the importance of students learning how to use technology and have enacted new technology standards that require teachers to integrate the use of technology into the curriculum for every subject. They have seen the great need for K-12 students to learn to use technology as a part of their daily lives in order to prepare themselves for a future filled with technology. Almost all workers in business, industry, government, and education are now required to use technology. The technology skills and knowledge that students gain in the classroom will create a foundation for the technology skills and knowledge they will need in the future.

There are many reasons technology integration is needed in education. Robyler (2003) compiled a list of reasons why technology should be used based on current research.

Elements of a Rationale for Using Technology in Education

1. Technology provides motivation for students by:

Gaining learner attention
Engaging the learner through production work
Increasing perceptions of control

2. Technology offers unique instructional capabilities, such as:

Linking learners to information and educational resources
Helping learners visualize problems and solutions
Tracking learner progress
Linking learners to learning tools

3. Technology gives support for new instructional approaches, such as:

Cooperative learning
Shared intelligence
Problem solving and higher level skills

4. Technology increased teacher productivity by:

Freeing time to work with students by helping with production and record-keeping tasks
Providing more accurate information more quickly
Allowing teachers to produce better looking, more “student-friendly” materials more quickly

5. Technology skills are required for an information age:

Technology literacy
Information literacy
Visual literacy