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Why should technology be integrated into the curriculum?

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Why should technology be integrated into the curriculum?

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For the 45 states who opted into Common Core, using technology in the classroom is no longer a choice -- it's required. Common Core's Standards insist that for any student to be prepared for college and career requires they be digitally and technologically savvy.

From the English Language Arts Standards: Technology differentiates for student learning styles by providing an alternative method of achieving conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and applying this knowledge to authentic circumstances.

From the Math Standards: Mathematically proficient students consider the available tools when solving a mathematical problem. These tools might include pencil and paper, concrete models, a ruler, a protractor, a calculator, a spreadsheet, a computer algebra system, a statistical package, or dynamic geometry software. Proficient students are sufficiently familiar with tools appropriate for their grade or course to make sound decisions about when each of these tools might be helpful.

The standards themselves go into detail. Sprinkled throughout are constant allusions to the importance of using technology, its fundamental nature as the bedrock of education, and the necessity to weave it throughout the academic fabric, regardless the topic, skill or requirement.

Here are 13 reasons why this is a good idea. The first seven are directly from the Standards, the last six from my classroom experience.

2. Technology e nables students to build strong content knowledge wherever they find it. It's easy for students to pursue anything they're curious about with technology. Make available online dictionaries to quickly look up unknown words. Teach students the tricks of quick and accurate online research. Follow the lead of hundreds of schools nationwide that have added the Genius Hour to their curriculum, where students follow school academic guidelines 80 percent of the time and get to follow their own passion for the remaining 20 percent.

8. Common Core expects students to be active learners, authors, not just consumers. Technology makes that happen by asking them to publish, share, collaborate.

9. Students want to use technology. When students use iPads, Chromebooks, laptops, widgets, online tools and a plethora of other digital devices, technology provides a path to learning that students are eager to follow. Why ask them to unplug at the schoolhouse door?

10. Technology is its own assessment tool. To paraphrase James Paul Gee, a professor of literacy studies at Arizona State University: "When students use simulations, games, videos to learn, they have to problem-solve, critically think, transfer knowledge from other learning experiences." That's a good thing.

11. Learning with technology is connected. In a connected, technology-rich environment, students engage with peers, celebrities, relatives and experts worldwide. They like to do that. Why do you think social media is so viral?

12. Technology gives students an equal voice. Student value is in what they produce, not based on age or grade level. Their voices are important; they are listened to. If they publish an ebook, it is judged on the quality of writing, not their age. Where else can this happen?

13. Consider a video. For teaching, that is. Students can pause it, rewind, learn at their own pace. That's technology.
Use these 13 reasons to offset the three most popular excuses for not using technology:
1. It doesn't fit into my program.

2. I'm already juggling too much.

3. I don't have time to learn it or use it.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach once said, "Teachers will not be replaced by technology, but teachers who don't use technology will be replaced by those who do." Amen.
If you don't use technology in the classroom -- or wish you didn't have to -- share your reasons.
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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, a columnist for Examiner.com, tech expert, and a weekly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she's editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer.

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13 Reasons for Using Technology in the Classroom

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For the 45 states who opted into Common Core, using technology in the classroom is no longer a choice -- it's required. Common Core's Standards insist that for any student to be prepared for college and career requires they be digitally and technologically savvy.

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Integrating Technology for Student Engagement

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Integrating Technology for Student Engagement

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Piecemeal, pen-and-paper, day-by-day curriculums didn't allow for flexibility or scalability

Difficulty designing curriculums and lessons for new grades as the school expanded, particularly for new teachers and substitutes

Lack of alignment and sporadic collaboration, based on individual preference, ability, and time

Solution Results

An accessible and flexible online platform to help with planning

Ability to bring over successful lessons from previous years-no more starting from scratch for new teachers or substitutes

Ability to check for vertical and horizontal alignment, providing curriculum consistency between grades, subjects, years, and teachers

At the beginning of every school year, Rebecca McGinnis would climb Mt. Everest without a guide. She would sit at her desk in front of her school calendar, with just paper and pencil, to try to map lessons for the coming months.
She was a new teacher, too. So, on top of wrapping her head around the school year ahead, she was simultaneously striving to survive knowing the whole process would repeat the following year.

"It just seems very overwhelming...I definitely had feelings of, is this even something I can accomplish? Am I on pace? Am I on track? Is this an appropriate amount of time?" recalls the Social Sciences teacher at New Hope Christian Academy.

McGinnis was one of the teachers working at New Hope before the school first discovered the online lesson planner and gradebook used by 600,000+ teachers worldwide, and eventually the complete Unified Classroom ® Curriculum and Instruction solution.

McGinnis was still relatively new to teaching when tasked with designing curriculums and lessons for high school classes that no teacher had previously taught at New Hope. That wasn't easy, she says.

"I was given the pacing guide that was in the text, and beyond that, it was just my own structure. I did look up a couple of other sample pacing guides from other schools or other curriculums, but it was very much a rough, pieced-together thing," she says.

And those pieced-together curriculums were pen-and-paper creations-meaning that, although they served her well at the beginning of the year, things could go off track quickly when she had to adjust for snow days, changes in schedule, or anything else that came up in the classroom.

While veteran teachers or those who had good pedagogy may have been penning their curriculum maps, like McGinnis, many were planning day-by-day only. And, being a relatively small school, not every teacher had a counterpart to reach out to for help. "They might be the only ninth-grade social studies teacher or the only fourth-grade math teacher, so they may not have somebody to bounce ideas off of," says Kim Shepherd, New Hope's Elementary Principal.

New Hope needed a solution that would:

Start new teachers off with confidence

Provide a way to plan for new grade levels and subjects

Offer a more straightforward method to organize the entire school year

Encourage consistency in planning across the faculty

Allow teachers the ability to adjust curriculum in response to unexpected changes

Provide a solid starting point for planning each year and each class

Even with co-teachers, collaboration was sporadic, based on individual preference, ability, and time. "There wasn't a lot of consistency across the board. We were just kind of surviving at that point, picking and choosing what we could do."

Those day-by-day plans became cumbersome for administration, Shepherd adds. She would receive planning packets every week, but not everyone was on the same page. She did what she could, but "felt sometimes like [she] was just dumping some books in their lap and saying 'good luck'-there wasn't a great map or a plan to give them."

To further complicate matters, this happened when New Hope was going through a higher-than-usual period of turnover. The school was hungry for a more reliable approach to curriculum mapping and lesson planning that would also start new faculty on the right foot.

Step by Step, Win by Win

The following year, New Hope adopted Unified Classroom ® Curriculum and Instruction across the board-from preschool to 12th grade.

"I think what stood out most was the simplicity of it," Shepherd remembers. She saw immense value in the way teachers could input their curriculum and lesson details and produce an organized plan-color-coded and scheduled. She also appreciated the accessibility and flexibility of an online platform (also available on iPhone, iPad, and Android devices) to help with planning anytime, anywhere.

But most importantly, she saw the potential to solve many of her school's challenges. For example, "the curriculum mapping feature was huge because we knew that was an area that we were lacking in," she says.

McGinnis was among the first to jump on board. "Unified Classroom ® Curriculum and Instruction made it very easy to set up the whole structure of the year, the curriculum, the standards. And then you could very easily visualize what that would mean," she says. "I could put in how many lessons I typically do and literally see where the blanks are, see where the holes are in the standards."

"The unit view makes it really easy to move things around. I can put on the test and quickly bump it down if I feel like an activity might actually take us two days," she says.

Rather than thinking about every single class for the whole day, she was able to hyper-focus on just one class or one unit at a time, which made her planning process much smoother.

She no longer felt like she was flying by the seat of her pants. Instead, she was aware of the gaps in her curriculum and her class's progression throughout the year. "It's a very good feeling to be able to sit here and say, I covered what I was supposed to cover this year because [we hit] the standards checkpoint and I'm on pace with what I had set out," she says. "I know where I'm supposed to be, and I know where I am."

And Shepherd appreciates the consistency that's growing between grades, subjects, years, and teachers, particularly among some of her elementary classrooms where teachers educate across up to seven or eight subjects a day.

No more starting from scratch-teachers can bring over successful lessons from previous years. They're free to make changes based on their style or the students in the classroom.

That saves teachers time and energy, especially as curriculum maps and lesson plans improve over time, and it also helps new teachers by giving them a strong starting point. And it aids substitute teachers, too, who now have easy access to a well-thought-out resource that keeps students learning continuously.

With Curriculum Map Comparisons, teachers and administrators can check for vertical and horizontal alignment, too, Shepherd adds. "To be able to look at second grade and third grade and fourth grade together and look at where we are introducing multiplication and how it's being taught at each of those grade levels, is a really cool feature that I'm hoping to use more."

As Shepherd puts it, "the things that we knew were issues-substitute plans, vertical alignment, ensuring daily lesson plans are significant and sufficient-Unified Classroom ® Curriculum and Instruction addressed."

Looking Forward with New Hope

For Shepherd, consistency has been one of the most valuable outcomes over the past seven years with Unified Classroom ® Curriculum and Instruction.

"Bringing Unified Classroom ® Curriculum and Instruction...brought in a level of confidence. I knew the work I was doing. I was not starting over next year," she says. And you'll find that same boost in confidence and consistency-along with the benefits that come from it-across the students and faculty.

"The students benefit from teachers being more confident and more secure in their plans. By nature of having solid lesson plans, it made the classroom experience better for the [students]."

"Rather than everybody doing their own thing, and it being hit-and-miss in the effectiveness of grade levels and coverage of standards, I can much more confidently say now: yes, we are teaching all of the fifth-grade science standards," she says. She knows what's covered because she can see it on the curriculum map.

But for McGinnis, the most significant payoff is her confidence when she enters a new school year. "I knew the work I was doing, I was not starting over," she says.

"It makes it more efficient and boosts my confidence-and then the attention can be put on other things that don't make that initial beginning of a school year or a new class as overwhelming."

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Learn how one Ohio school moved from paper-and-pencil-based curriculum management to a flexible, accessible solution built to accelerate learning gains and save teachers time.

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Here is the link to view my website!

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©Katy King Acceptable Use Policy Announcements Digital Citizenship Frequently Asked Questions katy.king@smail.astate.edu Last Updated: 3/28/19 Advocacy

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Computers
iPads
iMovie
Google (docs, sheets, classroom, spreadsheet, etc.)
Microsoft Word
PowerPoint
Excel
Inspiration
Google Chrome

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"Another reason for technology integration is the necessity of today's students to have 21st century skills."

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"Another reason for technology integration is the necessity of today's students to have 21st century skills."

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Here is a realistic list of ways to use technology in the classroom.

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Here is a realistic list of ways to use technology in the classroom.

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How to Integrate Technology into the Curriculum 

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How to Integrate Technology into the Curriculum 

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I believe that technology can be incorporated for the good of the student and for the good of the teacher. Teachers can use google classroom and all of the other google features to share not only with their students, but also other teachers. They can use technology to collaborate with other teachers and it can be used for students to collaborate with each other. Technology can be used for students to complete projects and for educational websites.

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Here is the link to a website that has templates of HyperDocs that can be downloaded for use. HyperDocs are a good resource because all of the content is in a single document.

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Here is the link to view my other Board.