Application 7 Back Up

Running Head: INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY INTO THE CLASSROOM


Integrating Technology into the Classroom

Jennifer Osborne

Walden University
Susan Krauss
Bridging Learning Theory, Instructions, and Technology EDUC 6711I-7
June 25, 2009

Integrating Technology into the Classroom

With technology on the rise in the corporate world, many schools fail to support technology into the classroom. For example, it is rare to find schools that provide a laptop or computer on a one to one student ratio. Many of times, students are to work in groups on a computer due to the lack of technology equipment. However, students learn more in a collaborative setting when given the opportunity to discover new materials, according to Dr. Orey (Laureate Education, Inc, 2009). After taking a graduate course on integrating technology into the classroom, it is a pleasure to present a lesson with technology integration that supports my personal learning theory. In a tenth grade setting, mathematics is extremely difficult for students to grasp if they do not have a firm foundation of postulates and theorems. In this lesson, students are grouped according to available number of computers to promote student collaboration where students will be provided a handout for investigating relationships between angle measurements when two lines intersect at a point. In this passage, you will find a descriptive step by step detail of how technology will be integrated into this lesson and how the teacher will facilitate student discovery.
First, let us begin the steps of the lesson. To begin the lesson, the teacher will have to guide the students to tap into their prior knowledge with questions such as, “What do lines look like? What about angles? What are angles made of? How do we name this angle? Can someone tell me what a vertex is? Well, today we are going to investigate some relationships between angle measurements when two lines intersect at one point.” Having students generate their own hypotheses makes the activity more engaging and puts a sense of competition of who is correct (Pitler, Hubble, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007, p 204). In the meantime, students can predict what will happen while I pass out the handouts. Students will then get into their groups at a computer to get onto Geometer’s Sketchpad. This allows students to have the opportunity to practice their social skills. “…today’s students need to be able to learn and produce cooperatively.” (Pitler, et al., 2007, p 139). The hand out will walk students through four steps in creating and naming the two lines intersecting each other. They will do these three times to back up their conjecture. This is an application of testing their hypothesis (Pitler, et al., 2007, p 202). Measurements will be recorded as part of the four steps. With the measurements written on the paper, the students will then print out their findings. Students will then get their results and analyze their data guided with some questions for them to answer. For example, “List two pairs of vertical angles. Are there any angles that are congruent? Which ones are they? Write a conjecture about the relationship between vertical angles.” This is an application of cues and questions (Pitler, et al., 2007, p 73). As the students get into their groups to discuss their data, the teacher will encourage the students to look for similarities and differences (Pitler, et al., 2007, p 167). Once all the groups are finished, a classroom discussion will be facilitated by the teacher. Students will announce their findings while the teacher writes them on the whiteboard. The class will develop a conjecture that will actually be a postulate. The time length should be able thirty minutes for students generate hypothesis to declaring a conclusion. Now students will need to have the opportunity to interact with their knowledge. This is where students, in their groups, make a poster of what they discovered to hang up on the wall. This helps students to have a deeper understanding of the new materials. In addition, a homework assignment will be given to help students apply the new postulate they learned. “As an extension of the classroom, homework provides opportunities for students to deepen their understanding of the content and to gain proficiency with their skills.” (Pitler, et al., 2007, p 187).
With technology, students will spend more time analyzing rather than generating answers to compare and contrast. This makes the learning more engaging and less stressful for students who get lost in what they actually need to do. Technology has given many teachers more teaching tools, but in this instance, the Geometer’s Sketchpad is a learning tool for the students (Laureate Education, Inc, 2009). This lesson integrates different types of teaching strategies which are proven to promote learning in the classroom according to Pitler, Hubble, Kuhn, & Malenoski (2007). With this lesson, students will have the opportunity to be familiar with discover and exercising social skills. These are the life skills that students need to practice before going into the real world.


REFERENCES

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction,
and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom
instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Personal Theory of Learning

Throughout this course, I have been exposed to additional teaching tools, as well as learning tools, to use in the classroom, thus expanding my personal theory of learning. According to my initial personal theory of learning, I believed the first thing in the classroom has to feel safe and comfortable in order to promote learning in the classroom. In addition, students are to be introduced with new information with a connection of prior knowledge with added relevance in order to motive students to learn the new materials in a well balanced diet classroom. After taking this course, I now would like to be more specific about the balanced diet in the classroom. I believe that students should also have the chance to interact with the new information in order to for them to have a deeper understanding. As Dr. Orey stated, teachers should teach in the proximal zone, because students are ready for the new material (Laureate Education, Inc, 2009). With this in mind, students should also be taught things that they cannot learn themselves. In this zone, students should work collaboratively or with an external knowledgeable other (Laureate Education, Inc, 2009). This helps students learn deeper and the challenge is more for the student to enjoy. This also gives the students the opportunity to practice social skills as well. With integrated technology, students have the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the new materials or their knowledge of discovery methods.
In the classroom, I believe I will be more apt to do collaborative learning, rather than majority of lecture, now that I have a better understanding of what to expect in the process. Because I am in a school with limited technology, it is difficult to incorporate more technology into the classroom. Without the support the administration for using wikis and blogs, even this type of integration is difficult. I thoroughly enjoy the voicethread activity. I may use this as a teaching tool in or outside of the classroom. This would be a wonderful tool to help students who do not understand the lesson the first time around. Even posting powerpoints on the blog would be helpful to students as long as they have access to the internet at home.
One long term goal of mine is to be in a school that supports technology into the classroom so I would be able to integrate technology in my lessons without having to fight for rights to do so. Technology usage wise, I would love to have a collection of powerpoints or voicethreads to help students better understand more of the lessons. Also, these videos or powerpoints are great review for students who have access to the internet. Along with these, I would like to have a link for homework helpers too. Because mathematics is a subject that many students have a difficult time with; this allows them to have continual repetition of the lessons.

Second goal I would like to integrate into the classroom is to have students work collaboratively to have a deeper understanding of the new material. I would like for students to have more chances to interact with their new materials as well. Once I have the technology in my grasp, I would use it as a teaching tool and a learning tool. For examination purposes, Excel would be a great way to see patterns or if the trend is increasing or decreasing. Students need to be able to problem solve and how to compare and contrast.
Overall, I am waiting for the golden opportunity to run my classroom with technology. It is imperative that I get into a school system that supports this type of integration. With homework postings on blogs to voicethread videos of demonstrations, I believe there should be a great rise in the knowledge and confidence the students will possess.

Resources:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Voicethread Assignment

I was supprised as to what this program is capable of doing. However, the experience was not good in the beginning. I record myself and the file was too big, then come to find out, the voice thread does not read AVI files. Well, I learned something new today. I like how the powerpoint is broken down to individual slides. This helps from having to upload so many things. I enjoyed the experience and will be planning to use in the future once I have expolred it's potential. The link to my voicethread is http://voicethread.com/#q.b544411. Hope you enjoy it :)

Cooperative Learning Tools

This weeks' tools for collaborative learning were a great experience. I current am a facebook fantastic; however, it never crossed my mind to use it for collaboration. I know that wikis are for collaboration as well as learned in the previous class. Since these types of web 2.0 software are on the internet for students (and teachers) to collaborate, why not use them in the classroom? Since these tools are for students to bounce ideas off of each other, they learn more and construct more with what they are provided with. Thus, the connection to social learning theory, as Dr. Orey mentioned, the level where students are unable to grasp the concept unless they have a knowledgeable other, this is where students are unable to learn on their own (Laureate Education, Inc 2009). In order for them to learn, students have to depend on each other to help each other construct the project.

I explored "Building Homes of Our Own" and loved the software. This allows students to pick or build their home and watch the cost go up and down. Not only is this real life scenarios, but this allows students to problem solve. This also provides students to collaborate while they are in the quest of hunting or building a home within their budget.

I thoroughly enjoyed this section of the course because it provided me some ideas to take back to the classroom.

Reference:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.