Chapter 3; Developing Lessons with Technology
This chapter had a lot of interesting points to it. The overall
conclusion that I came to is technology is the educational innovation of our
time. It is something that cannot be ignored. We have to embrace the use of
technology in our classrooms in whatever manner we see fit. But, however we
decide to integrate it into our teaching style; we need to make sure to balance
it with the tried and true analog methods as well. Whether it’s using technology
to discover what to teach, how to teach it, or to track the students’ progress
we really have an obligation to our students to embrace what technology offers
and share its benefits with them. We live in an increasingly digitalized world
and not taking technology and all the tools it offers into the classroom would
be a detriment to not only our students but also ourselves and efficient
educators.
Tech Tool:
Verizon Thinkfinity is a really amazing tool. Although it doesn’t
publish much of its’ own educational tools or articles it is a great place to
start. It is basically a place you can go if you are interested in educational
programs and websites to use in your classroom. Their resources link gives you
all sorts of different portals to full websites like National Geographic Education,
EconEdLink,
EDSITEment,
and many other credible and useful sights. They also give you more specific
links that lead you to articles and activities within the websites listed
above. For example under the EDSITEment link they have a hyperlink to an
article titled, “It Came from Greek Mythology”.
Regardless of what you use this site to access it is hard to deny its usefulness to any educator or student.
Focus Question:
What is meant by “lesson development using technology”?
Lesson development is something that by the name alone is
very obviously a necessary part of a successful classroom. The book describes
it as the center to the work that every teacher does. It describes three parts
to lesson development; what to teach, how to teach, and how to know what your
students have learned. When I think about it broken down like this its
importance becomes even more prominent. If a teacher doesn’t grasp how to
successfully develop a lesson; or at the very least acknowledge the importance
of doing so they are sure to fail in some facet of their duties. When thinking
of lesson development I can think of no tool that could be more useful that
technology Technologies such as websites, applications, portable computers,
tablets, cell phones, or portable music players can be utilized to develop each
of the three parts of lesson planning. You can use search engines to determine
what you would like to accomplish with the lesson. You can also use online
social networking with other teachers to figure out multiple ways in which you
could teach the lesson. And finally, you can design quizzes that the students
can take on laptops or their cell phones to assess what the students have
learned at the end of the lesson.
Commendations for including great hyperlinks and relevant images with attribution - wonderful to see that become habit in blogging! :) The value of the resources you discovered would be hard to access without technology - and that is just the beginning! "Consuming" what is available on the internet also needs to be balanced with what can be created and contributed...and perhaps, transformed and innovated.
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