Technology continues to change rapidly and it significantly impacts the world we live in. As this technology increasingly invades our lives, teachers need to enter into the technology to capture it and find ways to use it in their classrooms. Students have already managed to actively embrace the technology with more than half of all teenagers creating media content and one third of them sharing that content on the web. (Lenhardt & Madden as cited in Jenkins).
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has established the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETs) (2008). These standards require that teachers facilitate and inspire student learning. “The central features of optimal learning are conceptual understanding and the flexible use of knowledge. In other words, understanding both the relations among facts and the ways to find or generate facts are the learning outcomes that we stress.” (Deci et al, 1991) Because information is changing so rapidly, teachers can no longer be content just delivering knowledge, but must assist their students in applying the knowledge and learning how to learn. Technology is an excellent tool to engage students in learning. WebQuests, wikis, and video games are a few of the technology tools that can be easily integrated into the classroom to inspire student learning.
Brown (2002) points out that the Web is a medium that engages learners of every form of intelligence – abstract, textual, visual, musical, social and kinesthetic. “The Web affords the match we need between a medium and how a particular person learns. By using Web-based technology in the classroom, teachers can meet the second NETS goal of developing Digital-Age Learning Experiences. One way to do this is to design math lessons that incorporate the use of Fathom, a software tool that models data. The ease of creating graphical views of data in Fathom, allow the students to spend their time analyzing and thinking about the data rather than plotting points.
NETs also recommend that teachers act as a role model and integrate technology into their personal work and learning. This standard is fairly easy to implement, as I enjoy working with technology and find myself investigating new technologies frequently. One of the websites I visit regularly is http://www.freetech4teachers.com. This website is updated daily with new ideas for teachers to incorporate technology into their lives and classrooms. I have already benefitted from several new websites such as drop.io where I can store and share large data files, delicious.com where I can store all of my favorite bookmarks on the Web for access from any computer, and yola.com where I can create a free website.
One of the challenges that occurs when students interact online is that they may not have been instructed as to the appropriate behavior. Jenkins (2006) expresses concern that the traditional ways of educating students in ethical standards is being bypassed as many students participate in online groups without any sort of supervision by adults. Students do not naturally know what is appropriate to share. The lack of training and socialization in the internet arena is not preparing students to participate appropriately in the media culture. As a teacher, I will bring awareness to this issue in my classroom. I realize that students have posted material online that is not appropriate and without guidance, they cannot necessarily realize the far reaching impact of their decisions.
The last standard is to engage in professional growth and leadership is a standard in which I intend to actively participate. Discovering new technology or digger deeper into technology I am already familiar with is something I heartily enjoy and plan to partake in regularly. I enjoy sharing my technology finds with my colleagues and plan to collaborate with them in the use of technology in the classroom.
Resources
Brown, John Seely. (2002). Growing up digital: How the web changes work, education, and the ways people learn. United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) Journal, 16(2). Retrieved from: http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/FEB02_Issue/index.html
Deci, E. L., Pelletier, L. G., Ryan, R. M., Vallerand, R. J. (1991). Motivation and education: The self-determination perspective. Educational Psychologist, 26(3 & 4), 325-346.
International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). The ISTE national educational technology standards (NETS•T) and performance indicators for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
Jenkins, Henry. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Retrieved from The MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning website: http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/{7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E}/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
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