Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works
by Howard Pitler, Elizabeth R. Hubbell, Matt Kuhn and Kim Malenoski
Review By Mike Maryan
Just as the title of the book states, this book provides valuable and usable information on how we, as teachers, can use technology in our classrooms. Even with the small amount of chapter excerpts available, one chapter and an introduction, I found the book excerpts to be very useful and thought provoking. I found myself instantly thinking of ways to incorporate the ideas presented into my business lesson plans. However, My disclaimer is that I have not been in a classroom yet so I am not sure if a more experienced teacher will find the book as thought provoking as I did.
In the introduction the authors discus how the use of technology can assist students in achieving higher standards.
"Research indicates that technology's use in the classroom can have an additional positive influence on student learning when the learning goals are clearly articulated prior to the technology's use (Ringstaff & Kelley, 2002; Schacter, 1999). Applied effectively, technology implementation not only increases student learning, understanding, and achievement but also augments motivation to learn, encourages collaborative learning, and supports the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills"
Technology in the classroom will also help teachers conquer 9 key instructional strategies. Chart is from the introduction section of the book.
The Instructional Strategies Defined
| Category | Definition |
| 1. Identifying similarities and differences | Enhance students' understanding of and ability to use knowledge by engaging them in mental processes that involve identifying ways items are alike and different. |
| 2. Summarizing and note taking | Enhance students' ability to synthesize information and organize it in a way that captures the main ideas and supporting details. |
| 3. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition | Enhance students' understanding of the relationship between effort and achievement by addressing students' attitudes and beliefs about learning. Provide students with rewards or praise for their accomplishments related to the attainment of a goal. |
| 4. Homework and practice | Extend the learning opportunities for students to practice, review, and apply knowledge. Enhance students' ability to reach the expected level of proficiency for a skill or process. |
| 5. Nonlinguistic representation | Enhance students' ability to represent and elaborate on knowledge using mental images. |
| 6. Cooperative learning | Provide students with opportunities to interact with each other in groups in ways that enhance their learning. |
| 7. Setting objectives and providing feedback | Provide students a direction for learning and information about how well they are performing relative to a particular learning goal so that they can improve their performance. |
| 8. Generating and testing hypotheses | Enhance students' understanding of and ability to use knowledge by engaging them in mental processes that involve making and testing hypotheses. |
| 9. Cues, questions, and advance organizers | Enhance students' ability to retrieve, use, and organize what they already know about a topic. |
To address these 9 instructional strategies, the authors developed four key questions that should be asked when using technology. The following chart from the book shows how these questions can be used to solve the instructional strategies. You will also notice the chapters of the book associated with each section.
The Four Planning Questions and Corresponding Instructional Strategies
| Part | Planning Questions | Instructional Strategies | Chapter |
| I | What will students learn? |
Setting objectives
| 1 |
| II | Which strategies will provide evidence of student learning? |
Providing feedback Providing recognition
| 2 3 |
| III | Which strategies will help students acquire and integrate learning? |
Cues, questions, and advance organizers Nonlinguistic representation Summarizing and note taking Cooperative learning Reinforcing effort
| 4 5 6 7 8 |
| IV | Which strategies will help students practice, review, and apply learning? |
Identifying similarities and differences Homework and practice Generating and testing hypotheses
| 9 10 11 |
With a better understanding of how technology can solve instructional strategies and enhance a student's education the authors provide us with seven key technology areas that we can use in the classroom. Below is the list (from the book) of the seven strategies, a definition of each, and examples of the programs available.
The Seven Categories of Technology
| Technology Category | Definition | Examples |
| Word processing applications | Software that enables the user to type and manipulate text | Microsoft Word, OpenOffice.org Writer, Google Docs, MYAccess! |
| Spreadsheet software | Software that enables the user to type and manipulate numbers | Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice.org Calc, InspireData, Google Spreadsheets |
| Organizing and brainstorming software | Software that enables the user to create idea maps, KWHL charts, and category maps | Inspiration, Kidspiration, BrainStorm, SMART Ideas, Visual Mind |
| Multimedia | Software that enables the user to create or access visual images, text, and sound in one product | iMovie, Microsoft Movie Maker, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft PowerPoint, KidPix Studio, Keynote, OpenOffice.org, Impress |
| Data collection tools | Hardware and software that enable the user to gather data | Probeware, USB microscopes, classroom response systems |
| Web resources | Resources available on the Web that enable the user to gather information or apply or practice a concept | Virtual tours, information, applets, movies, pictures, simulations |
| Communication software | Software that enables the user to communicate via text, presentation, voice, or a combination of the three | Blogs, e-mail, VoIP, podcasts, wikis |
The authors then line up the tech categories with the instructional strategies. The chart is from the book.
Matrix of the Four Planning Questions, the Nine Categories of Instructional Strategies, and the Seven Categories of Technology
The unique part of this book is after it has shown how technology is used to solve strategic problems it goes on to give real world examples of how this is accomplished in each category. It even goes as far to provide free website resources that can be used in your classroom. The authors provided more than one example for the categories but for the purpose of this report I picked my favorites from some, to share. Below are example provide by the book in a few of the categories.
Word Processing Applications
"One method that many educators use is to have students create a KWHL chart, which prompts individual students to record what they know about a topic, what they want to learn about that topic, how they plan to learn it, and what they learned at the end of the unit or activity. This is a great way to activate prior knowledge and to have students personalize their learning goals—one of the research-based classroom recommendations."
KWHL Chart Created in Microsoft Word
Organizing and Brainstorming
"Allowing students to personalize their learning goals is one step toward ensuring that they understand what they are learning and why. It has the added motivating benefit of allowing students some control and voice in their learning. A very simple but effective way to help students personalize their learning goals is to create a template using Kidspiration, Inspiration, or similar organizing and brainstorming software."
Organizing Template Created in Inspiration
Data Collection Tools
In some instance teacher will want to use surveys to better understand the students' academic goals, survey what the students want to know about a subject, or attitudes towards the class. The authors provided several free or cheap websites that a teacher can use to accomplish this. These sites are:
Survey Monkey www.surveymonkey.com This survey site enables anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily. It has a free basic service that provides most of the features a teacher would need to survey students.
Pollcat www.pollcat.com The free version of Pollcat is called Pollcat Lite. It provides an easy-to-learn interface to allow you to get your survey on the Web quickly. You can view/download survey summary reports, receive automatic e-mail notifications with your survey summary reports, and review/download each of the individual survey responses.
Web Surveyor www.websurveyor.com/free-survey-tools.asp Here, you'll find a link to RSVME, a free application that integrates with Microsoft Outlook and other e-mail packages to make obtaining feedback from people a snap. You can quickly and easily put together a questionnaire on any subject.
Profiler Pro www.profilerpro.com This comprehensive survey tool was developed to help K–16 educators measure both the effect of integrating new technology into learning environments and the effect of comprehensive staff development programs.
Web Resources
The authors provide two very cool resources in this section. One, is a list of websites teachers can use to look up the educational standards for their specific subject. And the other, is a list of websites that a teacher can use to make a rubric for their class.
Educational Standards:
McREL's Compendium of Standards: Content Knowledge www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks This online database of K–12 content standards and other valuable standards tools is used by district and state-level educators across the nation.
Developing Educational Standards http://edstandards.org/Standards.html This site is a comprehensive list of standard sources by subject and region. It also includes many resources related to standards development, law, and professional organizations.
Council of Chief State School Officers www.ccsso.org/projects/State_Education_Indicators/Key_State_Education_Policies/3160.cfm This site links to specific subject area standards by state departments of education.
Rubrics Resources:
Rubrics for Web Lessons http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/rubrics/weblessons.htm This site has a comprehensive discussion of rubric design for Web lessons and other topics. It also includes a generic rubric template and general guidelines.
RubiStar http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ This is a tool to help the teacher who wants to use rubrics but does not have the time to develop them from scratch. RubiStar provides generic rubrics that you can print and use for many typical lessons. It also provides these generic rubrics in a format that can be customized. You can change almost all suggested text in the rubric to make it fit your own objectives.
Landmark Project Rubric Machine www.landmark-project.com/rubric_builder/index.php This "collaborative rubric toolkit" enables teachers to build effective assessment rubrics and to make them available over the Internet. Many teacher-designed rubrics are available.
TeAchnology Web Portal for Educators www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics A number of well-designed rubrics are available for free on this site. After generating your rubric, you can select all, copy, and paste everything into a new word-processing document. Membership is not required to generate rubrics.
Northwest Regional Education Laboratory: Science Inquiry Model www.nwrel.org/msec/science_inq/guides.html The rubrics available at this site (here, they are called scoring guides) help teachers assess students' performance of the essential traits of science inquiry: connecting, designing, investigating, and constructing meaning. The scoring guides define these traits and provide descriptive criteria for student performance, enabling teachers to give students precise and useful feedback as well as to inform their instructional objectives.
These are just some of the examples that the book provides but I hope you get the gist of how valuable this book could be as a resource for teachers.
Questions
· With the gain in student performance the use of technology provides, how can we as teacher go to the community, school board, or administration and successfully request better technology in the classroom?
Very good Mike!
ReplyDeleteI am currently working on founding a Robotics Academic Team for my school. I have found some resources from State grants, and I'm working on more from the community and the school board.
My experience has been in Industry for many years. I was the leader of an R&D test lab for a major corporation. I believe much of the same procedures and rationals apply. It was routine to successfully make a case for your request by justifying it via extrapolating data to illustrate the need and projecting return on investment from the initial expenditures. While the procedures are the same, the payoff result is different, and much more important!
Technology is so advanced that its hard to keep up with. Schools don't have the sources to get new techonology. Let alone teachers need to attend workshop just to be up to date. The program I would have the students use is powerpoint to create their projet. The KWHL is a chart that would be very helpful to use as a tool to find out what a student knows about computer usage as well as any other subject. Those websites mentioned would come in very handy for teachers as far as using them to create a rubric for a certain subject.
ReplyDeleteIt really is difficult to keep up with all of the new technology. I work in the Computer Store in the Robert Bell building on campus, and it's amazing how quickly they release new generations of computers. I bought my MacBook here last summer, and already we're referring to them as the "old black or white MacBooks," which we don't even carry any more.
ReplyDeleteA way to convince the community that if they can't afford brand-new technology (a new iMac prices at $1268, and that's with the 5% education discount) they should at least update as much as they can is to talk about how often technology is used in the world outside of the school system. If we're supposed to be setting up students for success in a job or college, anymore it is essential that they have a working knowledge of computers. As a salesperson here, I have to be knowledgeable about both Mac and PC machines and the required software. Even at my other job, working at the coffee shop in the village, I have to be able to work a cash register, and the music that we play for the customers comes from an iPod or MP3 player. And these summer jobs really aren't skilled labor types of employment.
Thanks for the websites. I will look into them.
ReplyDeleteI would guess most teachers could ask for more funding based on two ideas. The idea one that students need to work with technology to be part of the workforce of tomorrow and that many business will be hiring the students from the local area and this is a great place to train them today for less cost than it will be tomorrow when they are in the work force.
ReplyDeleteOne way is to show increases in test scores or achievement in classes where there are computers. The next thing the school must do is to priority which classes need it the most. Provide multiple computer labs where teachers can take their classes to work on the web and when they do this, have it so that ALL teachers and classes have access to it. Talking to some teachers, they want to get in their more, but its always reserved. They must do a better job to figure this out. Let the schools know that this is vital to prepare these student for college and the real world. Finally, have students that have laptops have access to wireless connections in the classrooms. While this may be tough to monitor students are actually working and not do other things, I do think giving this an option will help everyone.
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to NOT simply "complain" to administration about the technological deficiencies in our classrooms. Instead, we need to make it a habit to do the very best with the technology we have available to us, ultimately showcasing student work and achievement, and THEN slip in comments or illustrative points about how much better this could be IF certain technologies were added or upgraded. I don't think admin wants us to sit around and mope about what we DON'T have, but rather are better motivated to provide funding, etc. if they see that we are first willing to do our best with what we have.
ReplyDeleteWhen I took over the Tech Ed department in my school last year, we had a small budget and very limited equipment. I did my best to provide opportunities for students using what we had, asking for donations from local businesses, and introducing students (and subsequently administration and the school at-large) to some of the many possibilities out there that are available with the right technologies (robotics competitions, etc.) I think our efforts paid off as my budget for this upcoming year was quadrupled, I have had two major projects funded by other departments, AND we have had a very generous donation from an anonymous donor to purchase equipment for the program. Certainly there is no getting around severe budget constraints, but making sure we are taking advantage of the opportunities we DO have for our students can certainly reap benefits when decisions are being made as to what programs will or will not be considered for additional funding.
Dean,
ReplyDeleteWell put. I am concerned that the school I'm teaching at will not have a big budget for technology and that the students will be the ones paying the price for that. I think we should focus on what we can control instead of getting bent out of shape over what we can't. I think it's really cool that you asked local businesses for donations and that is also a good way to get the community involved.
I would have to say the best argument for tech funding would be how we are a technology driven society. Being tech illiterate is just as bad as being illiterate period. If we are to have students who succeed in the job market, they need to be able to utilize various forms of technology to be competent workers.
ReplyDelete