Blog #8

What technologies are available to facilitate general pedagogy?

Discovering the types of technology to facilitate while teaching greatly varies.  As a teacher looks at their scope and sequence they will need to understand the essential questions they are developing and the overall global objective.

"A major part of the problem related to technology integration is that most educators have not addressed the pedagogical principles that will guide their use of technology for teaching and learning. The intricate relationship between technology and pedagogy has not been adequately explored. As teachers explore the process of technology integration and search for ways that it can be effectively accomplished, they will develop the rationale to examine the appropriateness of the technologies they are using and whether such technologies are compatible with their lesson plan and learning outcomes. The process of exploring the relationship between technology in education and pedagogy will encourage critical thinking on the part of teachers as they practice technology integration." - Charles V. Schwab

Attained online: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/v32/v32n2/okojie.html

The major technologies becoming more available to teachers, however, slowly, in my class, are listed below...

• Document Camera
• SMART Board technologies and tools
• PowerPoint
• Film-making technologies
• Blogging
• Microsoft Word
• Neo Smart Systems
• 2Know It Clicker systems
• Ipods (if I had access to them)
• Ipad

These technologies are usable in a variety of ways to deliver important knowledge and information to my students. 

What content-specific technologies are available to promote better understanding and engagement?

In this section of my blog, I am going to need to do some research myself.  The problem with this section, to me, is that I don't have a content specific technology in my classroom because neither I nor my school has the money to get these resources.  Here's the catch, students are assessed on ancient devices and not the actual updated technological devices. Kids are shown a barometer during the times of Benjamin Franklin's era and asked to use it to measure air pressure, give me a break.  Barometers are digital now and can instantly read air pressure with the click of a button. 

If I could pick three technologies for my specific content, I'd get an electronic barometer for students to use outside to measure air pressure daily.  They could graph the pressure and discuss the weather. This tool would work well for science.

The second instrument I would get would be a GPS unit in which students could map out the latitude and longitude of where they are.  This tool would work well for History.

The third content specific tool I would like is a calculator set!  It seems basic, but seriously, I don't have calculators in my classroom.  Whenever we have activities for checking addition and subtraction problems, I have to borrow a set.  

Blog # 7 Assessments

How can technology be used for presentation of content and assessment of learning?

The options for using technology in assessment of content is not limited to the following list created by Dr. Cox and crew...

• Digital presentations

• Interactive whiteboard apps

• Info-graphics

• Podcasts

• Websites

• ebooks
• kindles
• Ipads
• Ipods
• Film-making

The possibility to assess through technology is a disruptive tool to the classroom.  Depending on the subject, certain material (say for example story-retells) can be assessed through various tools as digital presentation, podcast, and Smart board tools.  If, for example, my students were to create a digital story re-tell of the class book, I could assess their understanding of the story through their own re-tell.  

How can you implement project-based, authentic, technology-based assessment and still prepare students for standardized testing?

I'm going to steer away from the traditional, educational response on this question because I want to speak from a place of experience and heart.  My students are overworked, over tested, and then given a score that can only build or burn their esteem.  The average scores on these exams district wide are in the forty to sixty percent range.  Therefore, in my opinion, an inaccurate assessment of knowledge.  The systems they use to test are all based on language acquisition and required to be proficient, therefore my ELL and special education students are continuously reassured they are not successful individuals at school.  I will give my students about thirty hours of required district and state assessments.  My students hear the word assessment or test and their hearts pound in distress or for the few who were built to succeed in this environment, theirs is a minority, but they are happy.  I talk to each parent and each child and tell them, your child scored fifty percent on a district exam, but in all actuality they are right in the mean score district wide.  The parents confusion and the child's disappointment may rise when they realize that the test which told them they failed, but is that failure merited, perhaps failure is feedback of bad study habits, exam, or both. Yet, I believe my kids are successful and capable.  And while, in retrospect, I appreciate the data and direction assessments can take my teaching and my class, just not at the expense of the well-being that is so often dashed on the dicing boards of politics.  

Thus, this year I have taken initiative to disrupt my science exams by making them PowerPoint projects.  My students know the material better this year as they create slide shows using actual pictures and words presented in their own unique slideshows.  My students thrive at this activity.  With a rubric by their side, they are free to explore the limits of PowerPoint in an unlimited way so long as the requirements are met.  I haven't seen students excited to take an assessment until now.  They learn, they grow, they thrive.