The digital age is upon us and students are becoming extremely immersed in technology. It’s becoming a way of life for the youth of America. Therefore, classrooms cannot be a trip back to the Stone Age for students. The time is now for us future teachers to fight fire with fire! Or in other words, we have to embrace and effectively utilize technology to teach and connect with the students.In the October edition of the NSTA’s “The Science Teacher” magazine, an article written by Stephanie McCormack and Donna L. Ross highlight their approach to integrating technology with a lesson on bacterial transformation. In this article the authors explain that their traditional lecture, lab, and lab reports were transformed to animations, videos, podcasts, and how-to videos. McCormack and Ross conclude that this project “created a positive learning experience for students.” Not only did their students have fun, but they learned! They also point out that the decision to incorporate technology is easy because the noticed firsthand the differences in motivation and understanding of the students.
Michael Romano gives some great tips for teaching in the digital age. His reflection is also in the October edition of the NSTA’s “The Science Teacher” magazine in a column called “The New Teacher’s Toolbox.” One of the pieces of advice he shares deals with a cautionary tidbit regarding Facebook, the online social networking website. He suggests never adding students to your friends list until after they graduate and also emphasizes the “SPP rule” for your page’s content. The SPP rule is asking yourself if you are comfortable with any picture or wall post being seen by your student (S), student’s parent (P), and the principal (P). The other tips Romano publishes are for us future teachers to get creative with projects by incorporating the students’ skills of technology into a lesson and also suggestive of creating a teacher webpage for communication and compiling resources.
The below links are some providers for creating a teacher website >>
http://www.teacherweb.com/%20
http://www.classnotesonline.com/
http://www.schoolrack.com/
My next couple of posts will be reviews of the types of technology we can use for hands-on learning in the classroom. I will break it down into two posts, the first being hardware devices, and the other software applications!
I too believe technology to be extremely important to integrate into our future classrooms. I recently just created a website with helpful links to technology tools that can benefit yourself and your classroom. There are so many opportunities within technology! I really like what Micheal Ramono says about the "SPP Rule". We have to be very careful with what we share with others. This rule helps keep teachers in check with what they are sharing with others! Thanks for the great information!
ReplyDeleteI like that you said teachers now need to "embrace and effectively utilize technology to teach and connect with students." Students have technology and they use it every day Why not have them productively use the tools they have access to in the classroom? I think if we tell students "not to bring their phones to school or to leave them in their lockers," they will be even more likely to want to bring them to the class and likely use them inappropriately during class.
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