Technology

Teachers have been encouraged to use technology in the classroom for some time now. While I do not have a firm grasp of this timeline, my educated guess leads me to believe that this push did not predate the ditto machine, typewriter, or even the filmstrip projector. (If your youth prohibits your familiarity with these items, consider yourself lucky – though I do believe that everyone should have had the pleasure to smell fresh dittos at least once in life!) By process of elimination, then, one could conclude that with the advent of the personal computer came the drive to use technology in the classroom. For years the personal computer’s impact on the classroom was teacher-centric. Word processing allowed teachers to write and revise student work with ease. The ability to save and share files significantly changed the effort necessary to create and augment quality student activities. Moreover, the legibility of teacher created assignments increased ten-fold. At this stage, however, there was little change in how or what students learned. As computers became more prevalent and more reliable, schools began to cluster them and create the computer lab: the place that students could visit in hour-long sessions to perform a specific task for a particular class. For many years thereafter, the buzzphrase batted around was “integration of technology.” The fear developed that educators would use technology without purpose or context. Instead of learning content through the use of technology, use of technology could potentially become the content that students were proffered. The challenge tasked to teachers was to use technology as a tool within their content area. This use generally centered around word processing and Internet searches. These endeavors put computers in the hands of students opening up opportunities to explore and expand, albeit in temporary fashion. Using the Internet for research and exploration made information available to students not found in the school’s media center or in the textbook. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the computer lab, access to the Internet was a special event, a break from the norm. The computer lab became the school’s petting zoo, and from time to time students came by to have an experience with the animals. The prevalence of computers in workplaces and homes – and let’s face it, in people’s hands – makes this set-up an antiquated one. Lack of finances and, frankly, initiative have kept schools from evolving as quickly as necessary. A number of tools have enabled teachers to find a middle ground between the computer lab model and constant computer access, and permitted educators to bring the computer into the classroom as a resource to students. LCD projectors and interactive technologies (Smart Boards, Mimio, Promethean) have begun to change the classroom focus, and have enabled teachers to augment their instruction with virtual labs, virtual tours, visual aids, and the like. Daily use of these resources has the ability to revolutionize the traditional classroom. Access to unlimited, up-to-date information and the ability to present that material allow those who take advantage of these tools provide a depth of instruction not previously possible. These tools also enable students who create work in the computer lab or at home the opportunity to display this work to a larger audience. The interactive technologies, however, remain interactive for one person at a time. As wide as they open the window to the world in the classroom, these wonderful technologies still relegate at least 24 students in a class of 25 to the role of passive learner. Even more recently teachers have begun to use learning management software (Blackboard, Angel, etc.), wikis, and blogs to extend the classroom and to create a learning community that exists 24 hours a day, offers students content, but more importantly, gives them the opportunity to create their own content, offer their own ideas, and benefit academically and emotionally from an audience for their work. This digital learning community can contain all of the resources used during class (and posted on the interactive white boards), and within this environment, they truly do become interactive for all. When used effectively learning management software, interactive technologies, wikis, blogs, and the Internet are transformative in a professional environment that has admittedly not changed much through the years; and their use best exhibits that learning is applicable, real-world, a life-long pursuit and meaningful. The masterful use of these tools by the teacher creates for each individual student the opportunity to explore, reflect, author, react, refine, and publish. It creates the opportunity for students to create both individual and group products. It makes more probable the student’s ability to teach as well as learn. It transforms the notion that the teacher is the sole hub of the learning environment – that the teacher must be the sole keeper of all knowledge or the final arbiter of exactly what and how much each child will learn. **Examples of activities improved through the technologies discussed above:** **Journaling –** Writing journals has been a staple in the classroom for some time. Digital journaling allows for an audience as large as the author wishes. The text can be available to student and teacher only, to select students only, or to an entire class, depending on the type of journal and its purpose. Moreover, the journal is available to teacher and student simultaneously, unlike the hard copy journals which inevitably spent days in the hands of teachers who needed to grade/check them. **Portfolio Building –** Digital files are naturally archived, unlike the loose papers that middle schoolers have attempted to lasso and organize – often without success – for generations. This archive allows students to maintain their work, and webpages, wikis, etc. provide them a vehicle to publish them for an audience. As their abilities and experiences grow, they are easily able to showcase their most up-to-date work, and more importantly, monitor and recognize their growth over time. **Peer Editing –** In this academic world that is no longer teacher-centric, student work is a work in progress, a product that remains in flux not until the due date arrives, rather until the student feels it is her best work. The teacher does not have to be the sole audience, nor must she be the students’ only resource. Peer editing is powerful in so many ways – it provides feedback, it provides a wider audience, it benefits the reader both as an author and an editor, and it induces better end products. An intranet allows for seamless peer editing from multiple readers. In time, students will focus less on their grades, and more on the type of impact their writing can have on its audience. **Wiki-Research –** The largest social experiment I have ever encountered is Wikipedia. Publicly derided initially for its lack of reliability, Wikipedia has emerged as a powerful tool and as an amazing body of a team project. The public has essentially created a resource that constantly evolves, improves, and updates. The traditional small group project can be infinitely improved using this technology, and if woven together properly by assigning roles, tasks and topics, can produce a larger class project, and more importantly, a class product. This product could become a tool to jigsaw and allow students to teach one another about what they learned. Vocabulary throughout each piece could be hot-linked to a vocabulary section of definitions, a main page would connect all of the pieces together, and students would have a compilation of their collective work. Teachers could make the end products available to all of their classes, and if each class worked on a different but related topic, an even larger resource would be created. **Examples of Technologies to Avoid:** **Scantron –** Technology is frequently created to make menial tasks easier. No one likes to grade. Voila, the Scantron is born. Having already discussed assessment philosophy, it’s likely clear to the reader that the multiple choice test is not looked upon with any reverence with my eyes. **Student Response Systems –** The immediacy of feedback with these systems is a plus, and there is no doubt that some benefit could be gleaned from the use of these systems. That said, however, just like the Scantron, these systems force a reliance on multiple choice responses, and leave much to be desired. (I must admit, that in the right hands, an SRS could be beneficial. I have witnessed teams use an SRS with a large group to quickly determine which students should be in which group in an effort to differentiate. In such an instance, an SRS is an acceptable tool so assist with student learning.) Do limitations still exist in the educational environment even if these positive tools discussed above are used to their fullest capability? Absolutely. Schools are struggling, including this one, to achieve a 1:1 environment – that is one computer for every person – and until the availability of using all of the tools described above is ubiquitous, teachers and students will be fettered. Until then these activities will still be relegated to the computer lab (our petting zoo) or to the students’ homes. And, no doubt, even after the point when our ratio is 1:1, there will likely be innovation that will make all of the above antiquated. It is incumbent upon all of us first to become current in our knowledge of classroom technologies available and how one uses them, and to remain current throughout our careers. The term “lifelong learner” is used in describing the product that educators attempt to propagate, and nowhere is this more necessary to model than in the world of technology. Many offer the argument that technological obsolescence is age related. I suggest that it is, rather, a choice. Without a conscious effort to transcend, obsolescence is, indeed, an inevitability. ZMS teachers recognize this fact and are either: (a) determined to persevere, or (b) they are such innovators and explorers that they don’t understand what the worry is all about. In short, technologies that enhance, support and align with the instructional and assessment philosophies espoused in the previous sections of this handbook are not only worthy of pursuit, but must be pursued if our instruction is to be all that it should be. The examples listed above exhibit the movement toward creating **individualized, personalized instruction focused upon constant student improvement in real-world, application-focused tasks that students find engaging and interesting.** Our teachers must continue to innovate through finding valuable uses of new technologies, and advocate the pursuit and use of those technologies for the betterment of the student experience.
 * Technology**