Tech Integration Teacher, What time is it?

When someone asks what time it is, that person wants to know the time, not the history of the clock, not how a clock works, and not what other types of clocks there are. Classroom teachers want to help their students improve their academic learning through technology. Sometimes they need help with technology so they go to a technology integration teacher. Any technology integration teacher should offer direct instruction in exactly what the teacher wants. A friend of mine just came back from a one-on-one training session on a management system. He felt lost since the technology integration person showed all the possibilities and my friend became very confused as to what to actually do. My friend felt like the technology integration teacher was boasting about all she knew about the program. My friend did not come away knowing how to use the program. He did not have what he needed for his class. He did not know the time.

How do you, technology integration teachers, instruct teachers in exactly what they need in a simple manner so that they can spend their time on helping students learn their subject area instead of their spending hours trying to figure out how to use a technology?

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Curriculum Focus, Not Technology Focus

In my public school career I have been a classroom teacher, a technology integration specialist and a technology administrator. In my technology role, I served under the Assistant Superintendent for Instruction. She had a simple mission: Improve students’ academic learning. My mission was equally simple: Improve students’ academic learning through technology. I met with the curriculum chairs to learn about the curriculum, how it was taught, and areas in which teachers and students had the most difficulty. When I met with grade level or curriculum teacher teams, we talked about the curriculum. After carefully listening to them, I usually would suggest some technology tool that might help them in doing their favorite project or in teaching those difficult curriculum areas. I often would have a mock student product to show the teachers what the student learning with technology would look like. I focused on student learning, not on technology.

Likewise, when my Technology department provided professional development, we focused on curriculum such as “Inquiry Science,” “Collaborative Math Projects,” and “A New Look at the Writing Process.” We offered curriculum workshops that involved technology. Usually, the technology transformed the learning process.

People in  the educational technology  field are most effective when they focus foremost on student  academic learning; they are least effective when they “sell” technology to teachers.

Students React to Digital Badges: Pros, Cons and Interesting

 

ISTE 2016

By Harry Grover Tuttle, Ed. D.

College World Language Students’ Preferences

Digital Badges – 52%        Paper Certificates – 48%

World Language: Can-Do Digital Badges
Digital Badges Pro-
– Breaks down proficiency more
– Shows all badges at once
– Is more attractive
– Is more appropriate since we use Schoology
– Avoids misplacing paper certificates

Con – Prefer Paper Certificates
– Looks more official / credibile
– Has a physical touch
– Is easier for me, limited tech at home
– Is easier to read the proficiency name
– Can have it when the course / Schoology ends
– Can see a pile of my certificates
– Can easily show it to others
– Can post it on frig / decorate my folder with it

Advantage of Both:
– Tells me my actual speaking skill, not my grade with homework,etc.
– Shows my  progress in speaking (still have lots to do)

Interesting (Some issues) : Teacher
– Uses badge to cover each individual proficiency or to cover categories of proficiencies. (i.e. 100 proficiencies or 12 categories)
– Makes badge names short but meaningful (not I.A.2)
– Determines level of proficiency for badge (80%, 90%, 100%)
– Needs student proficiency demonstraton time
– Needs time to award badge

English Common Core Mobile Activities ebook

English Common Core Mobile Activities

I recently published English Common Core Mobile Activities ebook.

Use these 150+ different mobile activities to guide your students in learning and demonstrating the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Anchor Statements in Language, Speaking and Listening, Reading, and Writing. The activities, organized by Anchor Statements, actively engage your students. More than half the English activities are non-fiction. Although the ebook is intended for grades 6-12,  English teachers at both the elementary and the college level can easily adapt the activities. Over 98% of the suggested apps are free and work on both Android and iPad. Many of these mobile activities can be implemented immediately in the classroom. Each activity is described in detail; most students already can use the app in each activity. Students spend time in achieving the Anchor Statements, not in learning apps. Many of these ELA mobile activities are done in pairs or small group so not all students need to have a mobile device.  $7.99 available at  http://bit.ly/engccmobile

Giving Students a Voice in App Selection

Traditionally, teachers research apps for their class. They assign apps to students.  The teachers assign a specific app or give students a choice of several pre-selected apps.  As a Modern Language teacher, I suggested apps to my students in the early part of the year.

However, in January, I let my students select which apps they wanted to use based on their own app searching and a minimal checklist.  I just gave them a topic to search as “food”. I asked them to look at  two or more apps that had the same topic.  My minimal checklist includes: has a comprehensive list  of words, phrases, or sentences for the topic;  gives the written Spanish word and its definition (or included a picture); pronounces the word; is  free; and is available on both Android and Ipad. The app gets extra points if it uses the words or phrases in sentences or questions.  The app also receives extra points if  the app provides practice on the words.

I found that when I let my students select which apps they wanted to use based on their own app searching and a minimal checklist, they actually used the app. In fact, they often commented to other students about their great app for the topic. They willingly showed me the app. They shared stories about where they were when they were using the app (supposedly helping Mom in the grocery store!).

More importantly, they learned the critical vocabulary for the topic from the app so they were ready to use the vocabulary in their communicating about the topic.

Who selects apps for your students?

My ebook, 90 Mobile Learning Modern Language Activities, is available at http://bit.ly/90mlact.

My three formative assessment books, Improving Foreign Language Speaking Through Formative Assessment, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students and Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, are available at   http://is.gd/tbook

My modern language blogs are  now at  http://bit.ly/imprml.  I have developed 27  Spanish activities and 5 Modern Language Visual activities in which students  express themselves in the modern language and move toward spontaneous speaking Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

Return on Investments (ROI) Improves the Quality of Learning With Technology

Return on Investment (ROI) is a business term that can help us better understand the learning process. The term asks if the investment of time, resources, and people is worth the return. The higher the ROI, the better. In education, our return is student learning. So the question becomes how we as educators use time, resources and people to get the best learning return.

We can ask ourselves what is the ROI for students learning in a certain manner.  A critical question is what technology best promotes the particular learning goal in an efficient manner?

When a class spends five days on doing a podcast about a battle in the US Civil War, they may not be focusing effectively on the learning goal of using DBQ (document based questions) to explain the results of the Civil War. They could do a quick  20 minute Inspiration comparison chart about the war as told in letters from  two soldiers and learn just as much. Although podcasts are a powerful learning technology, they may not be the best tool for a particular learning goal.  In addition, when a class has a blog in which students discuss a  story they have read, they may be missing the individual analysis that can be done just as easily through word processing.  When students word process their  own individual analysis  they more closely duplicate what they will do on  their state ELA assessment.

Our students can use technology to improve their learning when we select  an appropriate and efficient technology for the learning goal.

What technology do you select for your learning goals? What is its ROI?

I have 15+ Spanish spontaneous speaking activities at Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

My formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook

Carefully teaching another culture to promote positive feelings

Anyone teaching about another culture has to be very careful in how the person presents the culture.  The person may create negative feelings toward the culture instead of the positive ones he/she had hoped for.  In addition, students enter our classroom with stereotypes about other cultures.   We tend to teach culture as a series of facts or as a feeling about a country.  Research shows that initially students become positive toward another culture by seeing similarities, not be seeing differences.

Salychivin analyzed that students respond to culture in a grid of similar/different  and positive/negative .  If they view the cultural item as similar and positive such as baseball, they feel positive about it.  If they view the cultural item as similar and negative such as pollution in Mexico City,   they see are    If they see a difference and that difference is positive such as all the parties during the Posadas in Puerto Rico from Dec 16 through Jan. 6, they feel positive.  However, when they see a cultural item as different and negative such as the Mexican Day of the Dead, then they feel negative. How we word information about the other culture can determine students’ reaction to the other culture

We can show our students culture in a positive way by

1) Showing how it is logically within the culture.   If people work 8 hours a day and work from 9-12, take a two hour break, and start work again at two, they will work until seven. By the time they get home, they probably will eat at eight (in Spain).

2) Showing how the same thing (a positive) happens in US culture.  Hispanic men tend to embrace frequently which may be seen as a negative.  However, if a teacher shows USA  football players embracing as a positive and then shows hispanic men embracing, the embracing becomes a positive.

3)  Using images and questions to present the culture.  As the teacher shows a picture of a heavy rainstorm in  June in San Jose, Costa Rica, the teacher asks about the rain and  the month and then explains that Costa Rica like many South American countries has two seasons, the rainy and the dry season.  Flickr provides a great source of fairly current images

4) Showing the variety in the other culture.  Do not only  show Lima (Peru) as the only part of Peru, show the cost, the mountains, etc.  If you show Machu Picchu, also show a  modern city.   Show how things change within the country such as in Spain paella changing from a seafood paella near the coast to a chicken paella inland.

5) Avoiding negative statements about the other culture:  “These poor people”;  “This war-driven country”;  “They only…”;  or “They are the opposite of /backward from us.”

How do you teach culture of another country to help your students feel positive about that culture?

Here are a few links to some Spanish images based on topics:

Deportes

Restaurante

Spanish Streets

(Type Spanish in the search engine for this site to find more).

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Also, my  book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

Animoto (Movie trailer) movies for education

 

I’ve been looking at some Animoto (think  movie trailer) videos.

The Free version makes a 30 second video.

You select a style ( background),  put in your or their images,  and select music from your  selection or theirs.  The program will put it together in about three minutes for 13 slides.

Here some of  my creations (some of which are around a minute).

Catholic Religion in Costa Rica http://animoto.com/play/PVNZenyqO4FqNy93ys9g0g

Research Paper (mostly text)    http://animoto.com/play/rWG9zzVEZWdfFDxehJaChQ

In-class writing http://animoto.com/play/foCfW0w0T0dMEzeUbEJ57A

Pros:

Creates an exciting media display of pictures

Easy to use  with only three parts (style, images, and music).

Ease to import pictures; can multiple select numerous pictures at once.

Can arrange the images in order ; just click and drag them into the order you’d like them to appear.

Can add a  text slide by using the “T”.

Can select either 1/2, regular or double speed to show images. (At 1/2 speed about 6-13 images depending on the tempo of the music.)

Can email URL, get URL or post to popular social media sites from the  Video Toolbox which is located just under the right side of the video.

Can remix it if you don’t like the original.

Cons:

In the movie, it might  be hard to see  the details of an image.

Some text may be cut off from text images; keeping your image in the 3:4 ratio might help  avoid this.

Keep text screens to less than 15 words to be able to be read the words easily.

More music without singing would be helpful.

Knowing the tempo of the music might help to figure out how many slides will be shown and for how long.

More styles that show the  largest image size possible.

Interesting/Hints

If you have a critical point, put in two of the same images since one of them might be shown in a way that is it not easy to view.

Some styles  seem to show more of the image; play with the various styles since each treats visuals slightly differently.

Select the highlight feature to keep an image on the screen longer.

My Animoto videos to date have been introductions/overviews  of  the topics.  I’m still trying to figure out how to use this technology to get in-depth student  learning.

Apply for their educational version.

Some educational possibilities:

Students can:

– Show the major points of their research topic.

– Show what they did in the important parts of a long project.

– Show  the major themes from a work of literature.

– Put together pictures for others to quickly talk about (Foreign Language).

– Contrast two works of art, two artists, etc.

– Show critical vocabulary  for a topic.

– Show what their neighborhood, village, city is like. Or its history.

–  Create visual travel brochures of the important places to see in a location.

– Promote a cause such as recycling at school.

– Show the categories or traits of something

– Pose  short questions for the viewer to answer.

 

What other ideas do you have for using Animoto in your class?

 

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Also, my  book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

 

Talk About or Show Learning for Success

Last semester I had several sections of the same English class. Idid some action research.  Both classes had about the same average on the last essay so they were equal in ability.  In Class A, I explained in detail how to do a classification essay for a full period; I went step by step through how to develop this essay type.  The students did several exercises.  In Class B, instead of explaining a classification essay,  I went over two classification exemplars and pointed out what the writers had done.  The students highlighted the classifications, characteristics, etc.   Each class worked through the writing process for their own classification essay and wrote their draft.  I did a quick grading  of the drafts of both classes by using a classification rubric.  Class B with the exemplars averaged more than a full letter grade above Class A with explanations.  As one student in Class B explained, “It was easy. I knew how to organize the essay.”

Let’s show the students the end product we desire (the content and quality) through the work of previous students and help our students  to understand that product.

Which do you do more of telling or showing?

My new book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Social Networking May Not be Productive

As I was out for my walk, I turned a corner and ended up behind a garbage truck (not a good idea). I watched as the man on the back who was emptying the garbage cans was talking on his cell phone.  He held the phone with one hand and emptied the garbage can bag by bag with his other hand. If he had used two hands, he could have dumped the whole can quickly but instead he took much time per garbage can. I had ended up behind a truck about two weeks ago and I could barely pass it since the worker was fast; this time I passed the truck with a few quick steps.

This man may be connected and in a social network but he is not being productive.  How does Web 2.0, the social network, allow our students to learn and be productive?  How do what the students say/write/produce using Web 2.0  connect with their in-depth learning instead of turning in non-productive purely socializing?

My new book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Evaluate Web 2.0-Based Projects For 21st Century Skills and Standards

How do we assess students’ learning in Web 2.0 environments? Go beyond assessing the mere mechanics of using these tools. Refocus your assessments to reflect the students in-depth and comprehensive standards-based learning and 21^st Century Skills.

Pre-assess Web 2.0 projects to assess the present level and raise the academic learning and 21st century skills.

A few Web 2.0 Tools: Blog; wiki; photo-sharing; movie-sharing; videoconference; and podcast

21^st Century skill as defined by the Partnership for 21^st century skills

Assessments using 21st century skills and Tuttle’s assessment tools (see previous blogs)

Blog/Wiki Assessment (Book reports) and make-over for greater learning

Podcast Assessment (George Washington crosses the Delaware) and make-over for greater learning

Photo-Sharing Assessment (Incan ruins) and make-over for greater learning

Movie sharing/YouTube Assessment (Shakespeare) and make-over for greater learning

Videoconferencing Assessment  (Book reports) and make-over for greater learning

Universal Web 2.0 Assessments: Partnership for 21^st Century Skills listing

Partnership for 21^st century skills http://www.21stcenturyskills.org

What lifelong skills will your students have after your class?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

Formative Assessment and Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment by Harry Grover Tuttle

My book. Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment will be available from Eye-on-Education in the Fall.

Baby Walking and Improving Student Learning

My grandson is beginning to walk. He takes about ten steps and then falls down. He crawls over to the nearest table/chair and gets up again. He does not get discouraged about failing to walk many steps. He walks some more and falls down again.

How do we help our students to not get discouraged about their failures?  Do we use the “fail forward” mentality that a failure is simply an indication that we tried something that did not work and now we can try something that can work?  A mistake is an opportunity to learn. When students see their answers and work  as work in progress, they are more willing to take chances and move forward. When we do not criticize them but help them to see how to improve, we encourage them to see failures as stepping stones as opposed to stop signs.

How do you show your students  that learning from  mistakes is a sign of growth?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

Less in a Course For Greater Learning

The first semester that I taught a Composition and Research course, I followed the syllabus given me. I had the students do an essay a week. I did have high attrition and low grades. I felt like students were just doing essays without truly understanding how to do each one More importantly, they showed minimal or no improvement from essay to essay.

This semester I have reduced the essays by half. I am spending more time in helping students to be successful. We examine other previous students’ work and analyze how they developed their paper. We develop essays as a class. I build in check points along each major decision in the writing process. For example,the students have to show me their thesis before they can continue, they show me their categories and topic sentences before they can continue, they show me a detailed completed graphic organizer before they do their draft. They frequently peer review each other’s work. So far the first essay that I received from the students is already at the same or higher quality than the final essays of the students from last semester. I am looking forward to their second essay to see how they have improved.

Do you focus more on coverage or on student learning? How to build in high success with your students?

If you are interested in implementing formative assessment in the classroom, my book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.

Passion: Use it in Your in Teaching

I knew that I had to revise a course (Critical Thinking) that I was teaching. The course bored me. I realized that I was not excited about the content of the course in the form I had it last year and the students were not excited either. The course did not seem to fit together. I realized that I had nothing to “hang” the course around. So I’ve decided to “hang” it around passages from Don Quixote, my favorite novel. As I look at the novel more, I realize that I can cover all the course standards by using the book. Furthermore, the students will learn more since the ideas are in a context and the book uses humor to teach value thinking skills. Yes, I will still use the textbook but the text will be the jumping off point for reading the ideas in Don Quixote.

I was delighted to find that in Wiske’s Teaching for Understanding with Technology, she has as one aspect of a generative topic that the topic has to be “fascinating and compelling” for the teacher. She gives the example of an elementary teacher who uses bird names for the different parts of the writing process since she enjoys watching birds. Another instructor uses his passion for bridges as the overarching theme for his course.

What is your passion? How do you connect that passion with the course standards? How does your passion make the course more meaningful for the students and allow them to better learn the standards?

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One bar or two bar learning

My wife and I attended the State Fair and watched the steeple jumps.  The announcer stated that a jump with a single bar is harder for the horse than one with a double bar.  When the horse sees the second bar, he/she knows the extent of the jump. With a single bar, the horse is unsure of what is next.

Do we give our students double bar learning where they know the extent of their learning?  Do we give them double bar learning where they know the depth of their learning. Do we do a teacher think-aloud to reveal the cognitive heights that they need to attain?  Do we give them exemplars so that they clearly see the jump ahead?

Do you give your students one bar or two bar education?

More Structure and More Student Success

I’m rewriting some handouts and I find that rewriting usually means add much more structure. What I thought was brillantly clear remains very muddy to the students as they begin to do their new pattern of writing.  As I go over an instructional handout with the students, I mark in the margins where they “got” it and where  they seem to falter or get confused.  If they cannot move forward easily, then I have not explained it very well in the handout. When I see their final essay with this new pattern, I can tell whether the handout did guide them in becoming a better writing.

I now have broken the body of each pattern of writing into very large graphic organizer. I give them plenty of room to write their topic sentence for each paragraph, the various categories of evidence and the details of each category. I even number each detail so that they know how many are expected. If a pattern such as contrast requires a special format, I show that visually. I always include a paragraph exemplary.

I have now required a completed graphic organizer before I will correct an essay.

One of my students who did well in her writing revealed her secret, “I reread the handout, look at the example, and then use it as the model for my writing.” One of my students who did not do as well revealed her approach, “I pick a topic and then just write.”

What structure do you add to help students be more successful?

Electric Mower, Retracing Steps, and Formative Assessment

I purchased an electric mower. It works very well. It is much quieter and lighter than my previous gas mower. The only trick is I have to  always mow away from the cord. I cannot retrace my steps.

Once I got into the zen of mowing, I began to wonder  how often my students retrace their steps in my class. Does each class move them forward? Do they truly learn a new skill goal so that they can move on to a more advanced skill or goal?  Do they continually grow not just in having more facts but in thinking about how to put those facts together? Do they become more critical in their thinking about the subject?

To be more concrete, in my writing course, do students master a skill such as using a topic  sentence so that they can move forward or do they always make the same learning gap over and over again?  I can  structure my class so that they do not retrace their steps but they always move forward. I can  provide feedback and exemplars that will move them forward. I can have brief direct instruction and mini-assessments to verify that they are not going backward but are moving forward in their learning.

How do you prevent your students from retracing their steps?

Short wins or long win: Go for the Short!

As I was watching the Olympics, I was torn between watching Phelps and May-Walsh.  Phelps won a medal for each swim race he was in.  May-Walsh had to  play many different teams to advance in beach volleyball; no medals were awarded until the final match.   Do we help our students to have  short wins (the mini-goals within each standard) or do we wait until the end of the year for the long win? Do we structure our mini-goal assessments so that students can see how much they have learned (advanced)?  Do our students feel like champions after each mini-goal? Do we celebrate their short wins?  Do we have the students keep a list of all of their short wins so that they can see their progress on their learning journey?  Let’s have our students win many Gold medals for their excellent standards-based learning!

Finals and My Learning About My Teaching

As I have been assessing the students’ final research paper, I’ve noticed that about 50% of the class has displayed the same learning gap. They have interviewed people about their topic as is the class requirement.  However, they have failed to integrate the interview into the research paper; usually they state the questions asked and the responses given as a separate section of the paper. They do not use the interview responses to add more details to their existing evidence. Their original paper stops, the interviews are reported, and then the paper starts up again usually at the conclusion.

As I reflect on the class I did on interviewing, I spent time on developing interview questions (non-biased ones) and the procedure for an interview.  I did not model how to integrate that  information into their papers and I did not have them practice it.

I feel awkward in thinking of taking off any points for something that I did not teach and have them practice, especially when so many students displayed the same learning gap. I cannot blame them for my lack of teaching.

What do you do when you encounter a learning gap by at least 50% of your students on a test or an assignment?

A Summer School Mentality: Focus on Essential Standards Learning

Summer school fascinates me since the teachers have much less time (six weeks) to cover a year’s worth of material (40 weeks)- about 15% of the total time. They have to decide what is critical content that will help the students to do well on the final or state exam. They reduce the over all content to get to the critical essential parts. They do not have time for students to do fun activities that do not promote the student learning. They do not have time for long projects that only peripherially add to the students learning. They do not have time for random web surfing but they do have time for specific web sites that serve a precise purpose. They may show a small three to five minute clip from a movie instead of showing the whole movie. The teachers realize that each class activity has to relate specifically to the course’s goal. Although many students are repeaters in the content, there are some students who are taking course for the first time since they want to get ahead in their schooling.

If summer school teachers can boil down the curriculum and the students can do well on the final or state exam, it means that much of what teachers do during the year may be non-essential.

Let’s all develop a summer school mentality so that we focus on essential learning.

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Classroom Observation of Student Learning- Listening to Students

As teachers we hear and see so much in the classroom but often we do not record that information so that we can reflect on it to see patterns.

Select a standard to observe for in the next two weeks. Select a key component of that standard. Select a performance indicator or indicators (what students do to demonstrate the standard to a proficient level).

Make a spreadsheet with the students’ names going down alphabetically (a class list). Going across the spreadsheet make a column for each time you want to observe for the performance indicator. For example, you might have five columns for “uses the inquiry process to solve problems” and they are labeled I-1, I-2….” (observation times) or “I 4.18, I 4.22…..” (observation dates). As you walk around your science room, you listen to the students talk about the lab that they are doing. You listen for phrases such as “What if….”, “What will happen when…..”, “What other possibilities are there?”, ” What else could cause ….”, and “When have other similar reactions happened?” Each time you hear an inquiry question or phrase you record it on your paper or computer spreadsheet. After a few days, you look to see the patterns based on what you have been observing in the classroom. If you find that you are not hearing inquiry type questions and statements, you might want to ask the students inquiry type questions such as those generated by Marilyn Austin. You can help students to develop the ability to ask questions, connect previous knowledge to this experience, investigate, put information into a larger context, and ask questions that move this experience to a higher level. You can move them from “We have a lab to do” to “How can we solve this problem?” through your observation of their inquiry skills.

Do you assess those skills that are critical to your students on a regular basis through classroom observations? Do you then reteach or refocus to help them grow more in the skill?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Eportfolio:Assessing Student Learning

When you think of electronic portfolios, what do you think of?

How does technology use help your students meet the school’s academic goals?:M. Hunter’s Roles

How used in lesson:

Hunter

1) How was technology used in the learning process?

2) How does this help you to better understand “How Does Technology Use Help Your Students Meet the School’s Academic Goals?”

How does technology use help your students meet the school’s academic goals?: Aseltine’s Questions

1) your Aseltine score (25, 50, 75 or 100%)
2) your comments on this score
3) your reaction to using Aseltine’s questions to assess “How Does Technology Use Help Your Students Meet the School’s Academic Goals?”

How does technology use help your students meet the school’s academic goals?: Your Hopes

What do you hope to learn from this workshop?

Deliberate Learning and Technology

In July of 1978 I saw a demonstration of a desktop computer (a Radio Shack TRS 80). Immediately I thought of ways of using it in my middle school Spanish classroom and so I bought it. However, I quickly learned that I had to program it; there were no commercial programs. I had to decide whether the student learning was worth my time in creating the individual programs. As I thought of each lesson that I was going to teach, I would decide if the computer was a useful tool for presenting or testing information. I found that I could develop meaningful vocabulary, grammar, written conversation, and cultural lessons. Once I decided to use the computer for a specific lesson, I had to be very precise about what I wanted the students to learn, how they would be quizzed, and then how I could structure the learning activities for students’ success; today we call it Understanding by Design. Then I would write the computer program for that lesson.

I included the computerized lesson as one of the learning stations in my Spanish classes. Usually the computerized lesson provided a follow up to the previous day’s introduction of a new concept or it reviewed a topic covered the past week such as vocabulary. Students would huddle around the computer; they took turns answering the questions. If a student was not at the keyboard, he or she wrote down his or her answer before the keyboarder entered the answer. Students were thrilled by the computer program since they knew instantly whether they were right or wrong. If the keyboarder was incorrect, then the computerized lesson provided some remediation. I felt like I had a partner in the room.

Structuring student learning for success through technology was a laborious yet rewarding task for me. Now, as I visit classrooms in many schools and have pre-service teachers report on their supervising teachers’ classrooms, I wonder how deliberate teachers are in helping students to be successful learners through technology.

I find that many teachers have their students use technology since the teachers can use the technology with very little effort. On the other hand, I have found that some teachers’ technology embedded learning activities result in much classroom time and little subject area learning. I feel that sometimes there is a disconnect between the selected learning and the students’ specific technology use.

If teachers can be more deliberate about the specific learning they want for their students and how they will assess that learning, they will create appropriate technology embedded learning activities that allow their students to be successful learners.