EDTC 6037 - Team Blog

Reflection on Existing Technology Integration Strategies After reading chapter 2 and learning more about the differences between direct and constructivist instruction I personally find myself incorporating a mix of the two in my classroom based on the content being taught, the time frame I have to teach the content, and the complexity of the content.  Direct instruction is basically the teacher delivering content and the students receiving it. I find myself using this in mainly my tested subjects (math and reading). For me, it's just a confirmation that students DID receive the content.During direct instruction I mainly just use the tv in my classroom and my document camera. We complete guided notes as a class and I don't require my third graders to copy them because I tend to lose their focus on the content because they are focused on getting the words on their paper. After that days lesson I post our class notes onto Google Classroom for the students to reference as n...

Reflection on Existing Technology Integration Strategies Directed instruction is simply that, me as a teacher, I am delivering the content to the students and they are receiving it. The focus is more on learning skills, methods, practice, and memorization. This is something I do often in my math class. I use guided notes so that we can focus more on them practicing the skills rather than them taking the notes. I have a Smart TV in my room that is also an interactive whiteboard. So I download the notes to the TV and I write their in different colors and then I save the document and upload them to our Canvas page for absent kids and everyone to be able to reference. The TV is the only technology I use in direct instruction. The students use graphing calculators and desmos for a lot of the concepts we are working with in Math 3. I also post videos from Khan Academy for students to reference. It seems to help when they get home and are lost in their notes. One goal for me is to video me...

Current Technology Strategies My goal as an educator is to integrate technology in a way that allows the students to create. Our district is 1:1 with Chromebooks, and therefore the students have the opportunities to create as needed. This allows the students to problem solve, work in groups, and teachers can assess their students with rubrics designed around their finished products. My vision and goal follow under a more constructivist theory. This approach helps grow our students into problem solvers. Chart 2.2 Directive and Constructivist Instructional Needs, Methods, and Assessment help compare the two theories. Looking at the chart, my vision is definitely aligned with cooperative groups, problem-solving, and problem-oriented activities, yet as an educator, students are held to standards and are required to show their knowledge through a state-mandated test. Therefore although my vision aligns with the constructivist theories, it does not mean I would exclude directed theorie...

Reflection on Existing Technology Integration Strategies In my computer science course, I used a lot of directed learning strategies to get students to learn the material that needed to be covered in the unit. For example, I used YouTube videos to show students concrete examples of how programming structures applied to real-world problems, such as managing a classroom of students. The videos were helpful because students that were absent or needed reinforcement could watch the videos at their own pace to learn the material. For skill fluency, I used CodingBat problems, which were designed to be just like batting practice -- practicing a skill over and over again with different problems in order to increase student confidence. What was nice about CodingBat was that it was an online tool that gave students immediate feedback on the material as they were trying out the problems and they could see how they needed to modify the program in order to incorporate all possible test cases fo...

Learning Theory & Technology Integration 1. My classroom consists of one Smartboard and one desktop computer.  We use the Smartboard to make it a tool for our student's needs. Even though we have one computer and limited access to laptops cart there are ways to integrate the one device by navigating to interactive websites like BrainPop, virtual math manipulatives and Skype for global learning in World History. My students learn better with directed instructions.  Directed instructions are teacher-organized activities that provide structure to meet the need of the students.  Instructional Strategies  I would like to enhance in the cooperative learning areas with my students.  By allowing students to work more in small groups to complete tasks or projects. The tasks would be structured so that each group member contributes to the completion of the task.  For the students that go off campus on job sites, the portfolio development would be hel...