Teaching+with+Technology


 * Week One **

“Technology is used as a tool to help students solve the problem.”

I absolutely love this quotation. So often, you hear teachers complain about integrating technology. They say that they don’t have time to come up with completely new lessons for their course. Instead of using technology as a tool they think that it should become the teacher or that is should replace what they are already doing. As educational technology leaders, we realize that this is not the case. We need to help people understand that integrating it is like adding chocolate syrup to ice cream. The ice cream is still good without the syrup but the syrup makes it better, just like technology makes our lessons better. A couple of weeks ago our PE teacher came to me and asked me how he was supposed to use a Wii game console in his classroom if it only had 4 controllers for 120 students. He didn’t realize that the Wii was there to enhance his lesson not replace the lesson. We need to make sure that more people understand that we should be using the technology to help the students (and ourselves in the process) that we are servicing.

This week we also learned about constructivist thought. I was really taken back with the idea that students need social interaction within the classroom to succeed to the best of their ability. This idea makes sense to me. We need to be able to discuss and argue ideas and thoughts constructively. The old “teacher centered” classrooms are no longer the way to teach. We need to let the students set the bar for themselves.

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, (1999). Learning as a personal event: A brief introduction to constructivism. http://www.sedl.org/pubs/tec26/intro2c.html

Sprague, D. & Dede, C. (1999). If I teach this way, am I doing my job: Constructivism in the classroom. Leading and Learning, 27(1). Retrieved January 28, 2011 from the International Society for Technology in Education at http://imet.csus.edu/imet9/280/docs/dede_constructivisim.pdf