Pulling it together

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my Web page, a place where you will learn a little about my worldview and a lot (I hope) about my ideas about fun and exciting ways to integrate technology into learning. If you notice a language-arts bias, that’s because my subject area is English. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t require much of a leap to find some general applicability in what's here:

• My philosophy on the use of technology in education
• Answers to questions for me as a prospective teacher
• A sample integrated technology lesson plan
• My digital portfolio
—Back-to-School presentation created in Google Docs
—Glogster multimedia poster
—Blog
—Manhattan Transfer timeline

ON THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

The success of our students in an age in which technology is already pervasive and growing exponentially more powerful will depend on how deftly they can use it to “find information, validate it, synthesize it, leverage it, communicate it, collaborate with it, and problem-solve with it" (Ken Kay, President, Partnership for 21st-Century Skills) That’s one essential reason why teachers must integrate it into their teaching.

For another, technology often represents the best and—in some cases—only way to reach students who, when presented with old ways of doing something, will find them either alien to their understanding or preposterously inefficient. So it is critical to ask if what we want to teach can be done using technology because it can mean the difference between hooking students from the start or losing them permanently.

But always remember (1) that turning students loose to play with gee-whiz gadgetry is not the same as educating them on its wise and best uses; and (2) that poorly planned, unfocused lessons cannot be redeemed by all the magic on all the screens surfing the Web.

Q AND A FOR A TEACHER-TO-BE

1. Describe how you approach lesson planning. Explain your thought process.

My lesson planning has been influenced by Wiggins and McTighe’s idea of Understanding by Design (UbD), which starts at the instructional ends you’d like your lesson to achieve and works backward from this destination. (Think of how you build a jigsaw puzzle or put together an entertainment console—by constantly referring to the picture of the finished thing.) Having goals to guide your instructional design has the additional benefit of creating a lesson with clear expectations for your students so they know not just what to do but why they’re doing it.

The other UbD ideas fundamental to good lesson planning involve “adding by subtracting” (by which mere facts are weeded out in favor of essential ideas) and constructing modes of assessment that don’t stop at checking what students are taking away but determine how well they can apply newfound knowledge.

To sum up, my lesson planning starts with knowing my learning destination; discriminating between essential, widely applicable ideas and “drilled” facts; and finding ways to measure if understanding has really been achieved.

2. How would you use technology to support student learning? Share at least one example.

I like how technology can draw students out, encourage dialogue between them, and take feedback away from red ink and number-scored grading. For example, blogging about literature gives students a chance to extend a point they may have started to make in class. In addition, as students comment on each other’s blog posts, conversational momentum can build, even among the reticent or those afraid of “being wrong” in class. Moreover, teachers can chime in to guide the dialogue rather than playing the feared role of Grader or Error Cop.

3. What types of assessment will you use to monitor the growth of your students?

Traditionally, students have been assessed with tests and quizzes to measure what they’ve learned summatively, or at the end of the teaching process. Coming at the end, however, limits the effectiveness of summative assessment. If students have failed to learn, it’s too late to modify practices to improve their understanding. That’s why I will use formative assessment as a way of gauging how well the ideas from my lessons are being absorbed along the way. By doing so, barriers to learning can be spotted and the lesson modified while there is still time to make a fix.

Returning to UbD for a moment, I will also assess whether understanding has taken place with the help of six criteria.
•Explanation (Can pupil succinctly and cohesively relate what they’ve learned to someone else?)
•Interpretation (Can she see connections, recognize patterns and put them in her own words?)
•Application (Can he transfer what he’s learned to unfamiliar contexts, situations?)
•Perspective (Can she distinguish other plausible points of view?)
•Empathy (Can he use his imagination to feel what someone else might be experiencing?)
•Self-Knowledge (Is she conscious of her habits of mind, strengths and weaknesses?)

4. Describe what a typical day/lesson in your classroom will look like. What might an observer see me doing? And what might he or she see the students doing?

I would want a normal day to not involve my standing at the front of rows of desks and lecturing from a textbook to glassy-eyed students. I would try strategies like think-pair-share to make students participants in their own learning and give them real-world problems to solve in teams. My classroom would be a noisy, happy place where kids wouldn’t be afraid to be wrong or make mistakes. For reasons that should be clear by now, I would look for opportunities to integrate technology into my daily routine. An outside observer might see me standing off to the side, taking notes, and watching what’s happening rather than lecturing. He might see kids proposing solutions or presenting hypotheses, first, among themselves and, finally, to the class.