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It is important to integrate technology into curriculum because technology is constantly advancing. Technology is a huge part of the world today and students should not get left behind in that aspect. Technology is used for fun in a lot of ways but should also be used for learning!

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What is assistive technology?
Assistive technology is assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative products/ devices or systems that help improve the living of those with disabilities. It is important to understand this because there will be a time when there is a student in your classroom that will need help from assistive technology. Some of these devices include:

Screen readers

Braille Embossers

Trackballs/Touch Screens

Text-to-speech (TTS)

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Often times schools can't afford to supply the entire school with macbooks or iPads. As a future educator I believe it is important to find ways to incorporate technology in the classroom without the large cost. After much research I found that there were several ways to use technology in the class even it is in the most simple way. Please visit the website below to view 5 simple and inexpensive ways to include technology in a classroom with a low budget!

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Even without big budgets, teachers and students in low-income schools find innovative routes to fun and effective learning.
By Alex Madison
In the push to outfit classrooms with new technologies, students at resource-strapped schools are often left out. Forced to make tough funding decisions, many districts can't spring for costly educational tools like iPads, interactive whiteboards, or even basic computer labs.

Even if they manage to get the technology, problems invariably arise. A cart of shared laptops is rolled into the classroom, but there aren't enough outlets to keep them charged. Students bring smartphones to school, but the school's security policy prohibits their use. The computer lab is taken over for standardized testing. The projector bulb burns out.

Teachers have story after story about technology failing beyond reach. But schools are also full of creative instructors and resourceful students.

Sean Walsh teaches in Malden, Massachusetts, where approximately two-thirds of students qualify for free and reduced lunch, a common indicator of poverty. Nevertheless, Walsh argues that most kids today, regardless of their family's income, can get their hands on a computer outside the classroom - whether at school, the public library, or home. "If they don't have a device, a parent might or a brother might," Walsh said. "As opposed to in a wealthier neighborhood where everyone in the family has a laptop, there might be one per household, and it might be an old one."

Corinne Strandjord, who teaches in SeaTac, Washington, says her low-income students are especially savvy with smartphones. "Because of their socioeconomic status, they don't have laptops or desktops at home, so they rely on phones for Internet," she said. "Not everyone has one, but most do. The same immigrant student who lives with eight people in a two-bedroom apartment will have a smartphone."

As free cloud-based services expand, and as more and more smartphones get into the pockets of low-income students, teachers are making innovative use of technologies that don't cost their districts a dime. Below, we showcase five of the most exciting ways that teachers use inexpensive or free technologies for fun instruction that transforms learning.

DIY microscopes

Microscopes are often too pricey to acquire in large numbers, so when Christopher Landry came across Instructables' nine-step method for building platforms that turn smartphone cameras into microscopes, he put it to use with his middle school students in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

Each platform took 15-20 minutes to construct and cost Landry exactly $9.98, spent on basic hardware - plexiglass, plywood, nuts and bolts - and cat-toy laser pointers from a dollar store. The laser pointer provides the macro lens for the microscope, and Instructables walks teachers through dismantling it to extract the lens. Landry noted that this was the toughest part of the construction. "You just use a really good set of pliers," he said. "And some patience."

The students in Landry's after-school science club built the stands together. "We were able to build eight in an hour with no problems," Landry said.

It's not just that the stands are vastly cheaper than microscopes; they actually fit classroom needs more effectively. "You can only put one person on a microscope at a time, but you can put five or six people around a smartphone," noted Landry. "Not only that, but you can zoom, and you can take video."

Landry said that the Samsung Galaxy has the most fine-tuned lens and leads to the best images. " The magnification you can get on this platform is pretty impressive, if done right," he said.

Landry has designated a section of the school grounds as his "outdoor classroom," and he takes students outside with the platforms to extend their learning. After Landry taught a lesson on cells, students trekked over to the outdoor classroom and stuck leaves under their microscopes. "What I really like is their portability," he said. "You can't take a microscope outside and use it - it's a pain in the butt."

Plickers

Daniel Noyes, a teacher in Seattle, Washington, uses a free app called Plickers with his AP Human Geography Students. With it, he gathers multiple choice polling data from students, using only his smartphone and some pieces of paper.

To get started, the teacher downloads the Plickers app and prints out individualized QR codes for each student. The teacher asks a multiple choice question, and the students hold up their codes in a direction that indicates their responses. Pointing his smartphone camera at the students, the teacher scans the room while Plickers captures student answers. The result is a bold bar graph and - if the teacher enters the students' names - individualized data.

The app enables Noyes to quickly check his students' understanding after lessons. "I'd say, 'Here's a map of the world. Where would you find coffee production?' And I would have A, B, C, D on the world map, and they would tell me where in the world coffee production is happening. Then I would be able to say, 'Alright, twenty percent of you got this right, so that probably means we should look a little harder at this.'"

After reviewing, Noyes can repeat the poll and show students their growth immediately.

Other polling apps, including the popular Socrative, allow students to answer questions on their own devices. Plickers is distinctive because it eliminates the need for students to have devices, or for students to spend time downloading the app and learning to use it. "It's [about] trying to find things that are going to be more equalizing but still get you what you need," Noyes said.

Remind

Remind (formerly Remind101) is a service through which teachers can set text message alerts - a simple but powerful way to keep students on track with deadlines.

Genevieve Pierce uses Remind with her ninth grade students at a high school outside Austin, Texas. "I use it all the time, because ninth graders can be completely ding-dongs and forget to do their homework," she said. "You'll be like, 'This is due every Friday, come rain, shine or apocalypse,' and without a doubt, kids are walking in and they're like 'Oh, I forgot.'"

With Remind, teachers can schedule alerts in advance - when rolling out a new unit, for example, they can input all the dates up front, saving time later.

Remind has just introduced a two-way messaging service, Chat, which enables students or parents to reply to teachers' messages via SMS, email, or app. In an age where establishing safe communication boundaries is of primary concern at schools, Remind's new service provides a secure option. The default setting permits only teachers to initiate chats, gives teachers the choice to limit their availability to "office hours." It also records a transcript of chats, accessible to all parties, for accountability.

Pierce notes the challenges of using a service like Remind in a community where not every student has consistent access to a device. "Maybe their phones are dead, or they don't have a phone, or they did something bad over the weekend and their parents have taken their phone away," she said. Pierce recently learned that one of her students had been going without electricity for months. "If you have no electricity, you have no access technology," she said.

Still, Remind is popular with teachers in a range of contexts, as smartphones become steadily more ubiquitous and as teenagers continue to forget their homework.

iOS Voice Memos

One of the Common Core outcomes calls for collaborative discussion skills, something that can be tough for teachers to teach and assess, especially with large groups of students.

Voice Memos is an app that comes preloaded on every iPhone, and students can use it to record small group discussions and then text or email the recordings to their teacher. Because the students only need one iPhone per group, this works well in an environment where some students don't have a device.

Corinne Strandjord's ninth grade students recently used their phones to record small-group discussions about short fiction. "I actually thought it would be harder than it was, or more complicated," she said. "I've never recorded a voice memo on my phone, but kids were like, 'Oh, whatever,' and very quickly, there was a smartphone at each table, and they were ready to do it, and they figured out how to text me or email me the recording."

With a recording, students can replay and reflect on their own discussion, enabling self-assessment, and teachers can listen afterward. "It ended up being pretty efficient," Strandjord said. "If you have four or five people having a ten-minute conversation, you're going to get way more from [small groups] than from a thirty minute conversation with a group of thirty kids."

The strategy works to capture the discussion skills of shy students who might not speak in a larger group. It's also fun. "They were kind of performing a little bit," recalled Strandjord. "Since it was recorded, it was sort of immortalized. It was cute. A kid would be like, 'Now that's on the recording,' if someone made a joke or something. It was fun to hear in my car, hours later."

Google Apps for Education

Google Apps for Education collects familiar productivity tools - like Gmail, Google Drive and Google Docs - into a free, professional-grade Google account for an entire school to share, complete with a school-specific email domain. With enhanced security features, full administration privileges on all user accounts, no ads, and a price tag of zero, schools are "Going Google" in large numbers.

Students can access their Google documents anywhere - in a computer lab, on a teacher's computer, at home, at the library, or at a relative's place - a critical feature for students who may not have their own computers. Teachers can type feedback remotely and even leave oral comments, saving time when students need lengthier explanations.

Now, a Google Apps for Education account also includes access to Google Classroom  - a tool that enables teachers to create what is essentially a class homepage that integrates students' Google files and lets teachers post assignments and content, collect student work and share feedback.

Teachers with access to enough computers can also use Classroom to give real-time feedback on students' Google files during class, while students are working on them. In San Lorenzo, California, Sayuri Shimada's students submit their work via Google Classroom for quick, specific feedback. "I can read through and type in comments faster than I can make my way around the classroom," she said. "Of course, I still work one-on-one with students, but oftentimes there are things that don't need to be a discussion, things students can fix on their own."

3000 miles away in Massachusetts, Sean Walsh uses the products similarly. "I can log in at the same time and comment on the assignment or open up a chat window," he said. "They'll ask me a question in chat and I can answer that too."

Google Apps for Education also facilitates collaboration via a "Share" feature. "Typically, when two people work together, one ends up doing more of the writing," Shimada said. But when using these products, "both work hard and watch each other's colored cursor move about and complete work."

Of course, all of this requires computer access, which Walsh says may require a little planning for some students. "The culture that we've tried to promote, and I think it's important, is that you have to be resourceful," he noted. "If you need to type this [assignment], you need to not do your homework at eleven when you don't have a computer, but you do it at three when you can go to the library."

As far as innovative technologies can go in transforming classroom learning, they don't act alone: their power lies in smart instructional moves by teachers who know how to meet their students' learning needs.

For teachers in low-income schools, incorporating technology - and computer use especially - is a matter of social justice. Technological literacy is, in a sense, its own learning target. With this in mind, Daniel Noyes has made technology a priority even when it's been tough to get his hands on the best tools. "The tech divide is real - [my students] don't know how to use the technology even when they are faced with it," Noyes said. The divide is apparent in skills as basic as typing speed. Increasing numbers of students can do wizardry on their smartphones, but keyboard skills still lag. "They've got to have time on the keyboard, because that's a skill that they are going to need to have," he said.

Conversely, when technology is available, teachers must carefully weigh when to use it - and when other tools will better meet their students' needs.

"There's a lot of good stuff, but I have to ask myself which apps and programs are most effective for the skills we are trying to master," Shimada said. "There are times when I open the marker tray and tear off a sheet of butcher paper and have them do a sociogram or something. They need to do that too."

Walsh, who runs a mostly paperless classroom, has not completely thrown out the pencils. "I still do a lot of in-class writing assignments because I think there's something to the tactile part," Walsh said "We do a lot of in-class writes, but then it's like, alright, go type it up on the Google Doc and share it."

Educators, what cheap technology do you use in the classroom? Click "write a response" below to share your story! All photos by Bryan Edwards
Bright is made possible by funding from the New Venture Fund, and is supported by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Five Cheap Ways Tech Is Transforming Classrooms - BRIGHT Magazine

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By Alex Madison In the push to outfit classrooms with new technologies, students at resource-strapped schools are often left out. Forced to make tough funding decisions, many districts can't spring for costly educational tools like iPads, interactive whiteboards, or even basic computer labs. Even if they manage to get the technology, problems invariably arise.

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Often times teachers become overwhelmed with all of the technology they could incorporate in their classroom! There are several tools that teachers can use and should take advantage of. Many of these tools will make learning easier and fun for the students! Educational tools will also help everyone stay more organized and better connected.
Some common tools that are often used in the classroom include

Prezi

iMovie

SlideShare

Fun Brain

The list could continue forever! To see more useful tools visit the link below!!

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What do you need to do to quickly develop critical thinking? What teaching methods to use? These questions will appear in the head after the desire to improve the quality of decisions made. The approach to training your thinking is complex and time-consuming. For this reason, many give up halfway.

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My Website :)

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Lesson Plan Ideas That Include Technology! :)

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Lesson Plan Ideas That Include Technology! :)

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The pressure is on, and educators are feeling it more and more.

Principals and school boards everywhere are requiring teachers to integrate technology into the classroom. Sometimes, the change is as simple as adding a computer class to the curriculum, other times it requires teachers to literally flip their entire lesson plan into a hi-tech beast!

Although these flipped classrooms give students an edge, they may also give their teachers a headache! Don't worry, I'm here to show you that whether you teach 2nd-grade math or high school biology there is a simple way to 'techify' your existing lesson plans.
Sit back and check out these 13 ways to integrate technology into any lesson!
1. Mission Impossible Challenge - Present a challenge to your students with this super engaging " Mission impossible" Template, complete with spy music! All you do is add your own images and Text!

2. Skype an Expert - The 'Live' version of anything online is awesome. Simply get in touch with an expert in any field, (this can be a college professor, the local museum curator, or even a fellow teacher). Schedule a Live Skype or Zoom session where the students can ask the expert questions - in real-time. If you teach Literature you're in luck, there is a website dedicated to connecting with authors - Skype an Author!

3. Five Facts about "Subject" - This is the most useful template for an in-class assignment or as homework (if students have the tech capabilities). Simply choose a topic, and write 5 facts about a said topic. "Hi, I'm H20 and I do 5 things really well..."

4. Fuzzy Image - You will need a camera or camera phone. Zoom in on an object until it becomes fuzzy or you can only see a small part of the total image. Print it out or project it onto a screen. Have students guess the mystery image as a lesson introduction.

5. Google Earth - This app is not limited to history or geography or environmental science; You can use it to show students where the pythagorean theorem was developed, or the actual location in China where 'Kung Fu Panda' learned his skills. Google Earth is a fun and really quick way to infuse some real-time, hi-tech into any lesson.

6. Interview A Scientist or Historical figure - Create a dialogue with a great leader in their field, such as Einstein, Gandhi, or Neil DeGrasse Tyson. This animated interview is very easy to set up using Powtoon. Simply upload an image and add a few speech bubbles. It's pretty fun watching your teacher hang out with an 'educational celebrity'. You ask questions and the answer is pre-made on each slide. Animated Interviews are also great for students with presentation anxiety because the slideshow guides them through each point.

7. Mini Me Introductions!- Turn yourself or your students into cartoon versions of yourselves! Students will get a kick out of seeing themselves on screen with a giant head and a cartoon body. " Mini-Me " is especially useful for the beginning of the school year. Your class can make animated videos or slideshows introducing themselves with key pointers, such as name, hobby and a cool fact they just learned!

7. Collaborative Class Blog - Set up a blog (WordPress, Blogger, Kidblog) for your class! Come up with a fun title with your students and create different categories based on your syllabus. For example, if you're an English Teacher you can vote on a fun title like, "Class 7B's Book Reading Blogorama!" Create a tab for each book you read like 'Brother's Grimm, The Giver, Macbeth, etc...' Ask your students a question in class and have them write a short post either during the lesson or as a homework assignment. Have them publish it the blog and tag it into the appropriate category.

8. Make a Meme - Meme Generator! There are memes about everything from cats to chemistry, to cats teaching chemistry. Have your students pick an image or provide your own image and let them fill in the rest. Print them out and hang 'em up!

9. Build My Website Project - Have your students build their own website based on course topics. For instance, if you teach History and you are learning about the Revolution - You can ask each student in the class to create a website covering 18th Century themes. i.e '18th Century Soldier' (resource guides, food reviews, military fashion, Horses in Battle, etc...) or 'Constitution Corner' (covering political candidates, issues and formation of the US government) Or '18th Century Science'.

10. Slide for Each Day Project - This is on one of my favorites. Every day after your lesson have one student summarize the main takeaway from the class in one sentence. Take a picture (either of another student, a drawing in a textbook, or upload a relevant image) and add it to a Powtoon slide. Voila! At the end of the month, you have a student-made, collaborative slideshow of class accomplishments!

11. Tell an inside Joke - Create a 20-second animated video with a personalized joke: "What is Mrs. Johnson's favorite drink?" Hot Chalk - olate! Yes, it's cheesy, but jokes are a quick and fun way to get kids situated with the idea of animations and short videos. Have them each write a funny joke, funny phrase or inspiring quotation. Check out this list of nerdy educational jokes and apply one to your class!

12.Lyric Video/Music Video - All students can relate to music. Have each student choose a short verse or chorus of a song they like, then have them change the lyrics to the topic of their choice. Here's an example of " All about that Space" by science entertainer Coma Niddy. Students can use animated characters and on-screen lyrics if they don't want to make live video. Here's an example of Uptown Funk animated Lyric video.

13. Video Clips - This is a no brainer - Use BrainPOP, YouTube or TED to break up the monotony of class by showing a video that enriches your lesson or even a short video clip that will let out a giggle. If you are giving a presentation via slideshow, you can even insert a video into your presentation without any tech skills.

There you have it! With minimal effort and a bit of creativity, you can easily integrate technology into any lesson plan.

Have you used any of these techniques for flipping the classroom? Would love to hear about your awesome ideas in the comments below!

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13 Simple Ways to Integrate Technology into any Lesson Plan

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The pressure is on, and educators are feeling it more and more. Principals and school boards everywhere are requiring teachers to integrate technology into the classroom. Sometimes, the change is as simple as adding a computer class to the curriculum, other times it requires teachers to literally flip their entire lesson plan into a hi-tech beast!

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1) It makes learning FUN for the students & teacher!
2) It prepares students for the FUTURE!
3) IMPROVES the retention rate in the students!
4) Students can LEARN at their own pace!
5) CONNECTS with the students!
*To read more information on each of these benefits visit the website linked below! :)
Benefits of Technology