Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching

            Chapter Two of the text, Integrating Education Technology into Teaching, helped me see how this accommodation can appeal to students of various multiple intelligences. The chapter was also proactive in regards to teacher’s self-reflection, and states that “awareness enables teachers to set learning goals for themselves and, in turn, to make thoughtful decisions for technology integration (67).” Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) Framework provides teachers with guidelines to implement learning theories into lesson plans using technology. The authors brought that “teaching is a complex combination of what teachers know about the content they teach and they decided to teach that content” (49). However, in order to integrate technology in the lesson plans, teachers will need to understand the concepts needed to use it, as well as. “Technology pedagogical content knowledge is an understanding that emerges from an interaction of content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge” (49).  Figure 2.8 in the text was extremely helpful in helping teachers visualize how other knowledge domains connect to each other to create TPACK. The TPACK model overlaps each other within Content Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge, and Technology Knowledge.

Technology Integration Planning (TIP) Model for teachers is the reciprocal to TPACK. Just as equally important to the understanding teachers will gain from TPACK, they need to learn how to implement what they have learned in their planning. The texts conveys the fact that there are different types of teachers, those who are very knowledgeable in their content area, some who are technologically savvy, and others who have a toolbox of teaching methods that they can utilize at any time. However, the six phases of TIP consists of the following:

Phase 1 focus: What is my technological pedagogical content knowledge?  Think where you see yourself in the frame. What are your strengths and weaknesses? This will help set learning goals.

Phase 2 focus: Why should I use a technology-based method? Everett Rogers brought out a good point; teachers needing to see a relative advantage. Meaning that before changing a lesson plan to incorporate technology, there needs to be clear cut benefits for the new method.

Phase 3 focus: How will I know students have learned? Well, the lessons should have an objective that students will be expected to met. The teacher will assess the students on how well they meet the objective.

Phase 4 focus: What teaching strategies and activities will work best? Teachers will take the characteristics of the topic, students’ needs, and then decide on what instructional course to take. Also, he/she will have to remember to take into consideration the classroom environment and constraints.

Phase 5 focus: Are essential conditions in the place to support technology integrations? This is important because if your lesson plan is in need of a Smart Board, so you can print notes from it, and you do not have the technical support needed – of course, it will be impossible to implement this technology in you lesson. Therefore, school districts will have to be supportive of technology use in the classroom.

Phase 6 focus: What worked well? What could be improved? These questions are also used for any lesson plan. However, in cooperation with technology, being able to pinpoint success will be helpful for the next lesson and critiquing.

I can recall being at a teacher in service about integrating technology, last month. We discussed how students on different academic levels can be incorporated in higher level technical assignments. One of my ideas was to use the Response to Intervention (RTI) pyramid and groups. The students will then be re-grouped into with tier 2-3 students to complete an assignment, and finally the students who are on an enrichment track would create a website for the assignment. The website would incorporate all the facts (from tier 1), the research and essays (form tier 1-3), and technology (from all three tiers). Therefore, all the students can see their work being displayed on the websites (on three websites per class). Some of the veteran teachers thought it would take too much work, but the instructor and other teachers thought it would be fun, and worthwhile trying.