How Has Technology Changed Your Teaching?

By guest blogger Leanne Link, communications assistant at the Center for Teaching Quality This month's Roundtable participants shared how new technologies are affecting teaching and learning in their classrooms. While most of the teachers celebrated technology's ability to promote efficiency and creativity, many also stressed the importance of exercising caution through thoughtful and deliberate technology integration. If you're just checking into the conversation now, below is a recap of some of the teachers' reflections: • First Things First: We need to ensure that all classrooms and all students have access to reliable technology, Karl Ochsner and Bill Ferriter emphasize. • A Real-World ...

Karl Ochsner My first post included a list of changes that are needed in education today. I wrote that first post in isolation—but was interested to see that others raised similar ideas throughout the week, in posts and in comments. So I thought I'd revisit some of the changes, sharing my Teaching Ahead colleagues' observations: 1) The technical infrastructure must be ready. Bill pointed out that, in order for real change to occur in the use of technology integration, we need to have guaranteed reliability. Nancy agreed on the importance of reliability but also emphasized that back-up plans must...

Joel Malley "Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information." —Common Core Standards: Writing #6, Grades 11-12 The above standard could refer to any type of digital composition. Blogging. Podcasts. Documentaries. Glogster collages. Google Docs. Powerpoint. Similarly, so could the Common Core's calls for students to make "strategic use of digital media in presentations" (Speaking #5 Grades 11-12) and to "integrate ... sources of information presented in different media or formats" (Reading #7 Grades 11-12). Any use of technology to compose, regardless of complexity,...

Marsha Ratzel Walk into my classroom and you'll find us on Twitter checking out the latest volcano eruptions with iTouches through live updates from the U.S. Geological Survey. Or students might be accessing earthquake data on I Felt That, an iPhone app. Both provide immediacy and urgency to my curriculum and are exactly what students crave in lesson design. So why isn't every teacher using these kinds of techniques? It seems to me that to be out there using technology right now requires that you have a pioneering spirit. That you're unafraid to be "wrong" or to have things "go...

Robert Pronovost When a Reading Recovery teacher sits with a 1st grader, she is not trying to determine a student's gaps and how she can fill them. Instead, she listens to a child read and analyzes the child's strengths, so she can use those strengths as a foundation in her instruction. Just as a Reading Recovery teacher looks for the strengths within a child, technology coaches and administrators should look for the strengths within a teacher's technology use. This does not mean sitting in a teacher's room for 20 minutes to see if the teacher pulls out an iPad or ...

Jennie Magiera It has been posited that technology doesn't change teaching and learning but enhances it, and I completely agree. And oh, how it enhances it. Video "cloning" a teacher so there are five versions of her giving five interactive lessons at five varied levels simultaneously. Having a student create a screencast of his math problem-solving journey so a teacher can capture his math metacognition and assess progress. Videoconferencing a class from Chicago with an international school in Japan to discuss different views of Pearl Harbor Day. The same skills are being taught as with paper and pencil, and yet ...

Nancy Gardner As I read the initial Teaching Ahead posts, I kept thinking of how sports metaphors can help us understand what happens when we integrate technology in our classrooms. Teachers become coaches. In a truly tech-rich environment, teachers provide input, evaluate effort, and encourage critical thinking and creativity. Meanwhile, students can take a more active role than ever in their own learning. They can "write in their books" by making comments beside key words and passages. They can collaborate using Google Docs or Lino.it. Every student can take pictures, create movies and podcasts, and Skype with schools in ...

Bill Ferriter Did you get the chance to read Karl Ochsner's bit on building the classroom of the future yet? In it, he outlines a series of steps that we simply have to take if we're ever going to see educational technology efforts take hold in our schools. His first suggestion—guaranteeing that our infrastructure is ready for the changes that we desire—struck me as a simple first step: We do need to ensure that teachers and students have access to working devices and strong Internet connections. That should be an absolute promise that any parent, pundit or policymaker...

Joel Malley When I was a teenager my father was fond of one particular biblical quote. Whether I was coming home past curfew, insisting my homework was done, or spinning a story about why I needed to borrow the car, he would look at me knowingly and say, "Kiddo, there is nothing new under the sun." A quick glance into my classroom might cause one to argue otherwise. My classroom is very different from the traditional English classroom I remember from high school. Circular tables are scattered around the classroom whereas in the 1990s I sat in a desk staring ...

Karl Ochsner I am an avid adopter of technology in the classroom. I've acquired many tools for my students, often by writing grants, scrounging, begging, and forgoing stipends. But I think that for technology to truly improve classroom practice, we need to undertake some important efforts: 1) The technical infrastructure must be ready. Computers must be fast enough to support the apps that are useful—and there must be enough working machines to support our students. Wireless connections must be steady. 2) Teachers must be supported in our efforts to integrate technology. Ironically, teachers are required to provide individualized instruction...

Robert Pronovost I recently heard Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) share a comment that I'm sure has been spread around the education circles: "If technology is the focus of your classroom, you're doing it wrong." While most people come into my classroom and see the laptops and iPod touches we have and are very impressed by their use by the second graders, if they stuck around long enough they'd also see we're not using them all the time. We do have leveled-reading time on the computer, but more importantly, we have interest-based reading time around the room. We spend time publishing our ...

Jennie Magiera Technology has changed my life. If you're reading this, then I'm sure it's changed yours too. Think about how much information you receive via a digital device. How often do you communicate, explore, and pass time with one? When our children grow up, they will need to use word-processing software and email, and create spreadsheets and presentations. So why aren't these skills also an integral part of their foundational education? Why are there still so many classrooms devoid of any technology other than an overhead projector and a handful of aging desktop computers? There are a myriad of ...

Nancy Gardner In 2007, the Mooresville Graded School District began a transformation called Digital Conversion. Five years later, all students in grade 3 through 12 have laptops. Our program garners national attention, and we frequently host visitors who want to see how it works. As a veteran teacher of 27 years, this conversion has involved a learning curve, but at this point, I canʼt imagine teaching without technology. Over the past five years, I have realized that technology is our studentsʼ world. They have facts and figures at their fingertips, they access and use technology with ease, and ...

Marsha Ratzel Technology has profoundly changed my teaching. If you were to peek inside my classroom you would see students using computers, capturing data with digital probes and manipulating it with Excel, corresponding via email with experts on the particulars of their projects, and so on. We'd look very techie. But what would be invisible to your eye would be the shift in how I approach learning and how my students use the "world" to learn now. That's where my biggest shifts in thinking and lesson design have occurred. Digital tools have allowed me to gather a geographically wide network ...

Bill Ferriter I think one of the things that frustrates me the most in conversations about teaching and learning with technology is the assertion that technology should fundamentally change who we are as learners. The truth is, I'm neck deep in the digital soup and my core learning behaviors haven't changed. I'm still seeking out conversations that challenge my thinking—or that allow me to pursue my own passions and interests. I'm still working to judge the reliability of information. I'm still organizing content and looking for trends across sources. I'm still trying to change minds by being persuasive. I'm ...