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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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Take a look at this post:

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Think that integrating technology into the classroom will only distract students and marginalize educators?

Think again. Since students are already interested and engaged in technology, teachers can harness that attention for educational purposes. Incorporating the internet, laptops, tablets and even smartphones into the curriculum has many benefits for teachers and students alike.

1. Engages students and creates active learners.

Using a computer, tablet, or other device encourages self-directed learning and creates an active participant in the learning process, rather than the passive learners found in a lecture environment. Interactive lesson plans can help turn "boring" conceptual subjects like math and science into fun, engaging, and educational activities for students.

2. Encourages individual learning and growth.

No one learns in the same way or at the same pace, but technology can level-set the classroom. For example, technology can provide accommodations for struggling or disabled students, and virtual lesson plans provide individualized instruction for all. Students can learn at their own speed, reviewing difficult concepts or skipping ahead as needed. Additionally, access to the internet gives students access to a broad range of resources to conduct research.
Ready to get started? Four steps to take to help you prepare a 1:1 classroom.
3. Facilitates peer collaboration.

In a research project conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, many educators reported that technology facilitated peer collaboration. They noted that when students were assigned to small groups for technology-based projects, those students who already had certain computer and technology skills routinely assisted less skilled students. Peer tutoring, mentoring, and collaboration were the unexpected results of the technology integration.

4. Prepares students for the real world.

Technology is an integral part of how we work and live, every day. Teaching students how to use technology to learn, research, collaborate, and solve problems from an early age will better prepare them for their careers. It can also help reduce the fear of new technology in the future by familiarizing them with the discovery process for each new tool.

5. Creates more engaged and successful teachers.

Using technologies like virtual lesson plans and internet resources can help free up time - both in developing and delivering the curriculum. This allows teachers to spend more time with the students who are struggling, ensuring the whole class is better prepared for tests and advancement.

As an educator, integrating technology into the curriculum is key. In other words, don't just add a piece of technology to a lesson plan just because you can. Make sure you understand:

How to use the technology

How to train students on using the technology

How the technology supports your curriculum

What benefits the technology brings to your lesson

An easy way to introduce technology is to start small. Try using a document camera to project textbook images on a screen, or introduce a website a week that corresponds with your lesson plan.

The point is not to let technology take over your classroom, but to integrate it. Traditional teaching processes like lectures, writing papers, and analog testing should not be abandoned. When combined effectively with the methods you're used to, technology can help you and help your students.
Capella University offers over 20 free professional development courses focused on educational technology, with options in three proficiency levels: limited technology experience, moderate experience, or teacher leaders/PD professionals.

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5 Reasons to Incorporate Technology into Your Classroom

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Think that integrating technology into the classroom will only distract students and marginalize educators? Think again. Since students are already interested and engaged in technology, teachers can harness that attention for educational purposes. Incorporating the internet, laptops, tablets and even smartphones into the curriculum has many benefits for teachers and students alike.

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Ways to Incorporate Technology into the Curriculum

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Ways to Incorporate Technology into the Curriculum

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The way I see it, technology can be integrated in two major ways. First, technology can be used as a teacher resource. This means that teacher uses a technology as a means to create something for their students to view or use to supplement their learning.
Second, technology can be used as an activity for students. This means that students are using technology to do an assignment. This could be a video project, a PowerPoint slide show, or

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Tools for Integrating Technology into the Curriculum

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Tools for Integrating Technology into the Curriculum

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Video Makers
SmartBoards
Interactive Websites/Games
iPads
Excel Spreadsheets
Microsoft Word
Google Drive (Classroom, Docs, Slides, Spreadsheets)
Google Classroom
HyperDocuments
Virtual Reality Tours
There are so many options!

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I am an advocate for Connected Learning. With this teaching method, students are able to participate in learning that is, "social, participatory, interest-driven and relevant to the opportunities of our time." A major part of this is for students to collaborate and be able to share their work with others in the school, community, or the world. There is no better way to do this than by integrating technology into the curriculum.

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For more than a century, educators have strived to customize education to the learner. Connected Learning leverages the advances of the digital age to make that dream a reality-connecting academics to interests, learners to inspiring peers and mentors, and educational goals to the higher order skills the new economy rewards. Six principles (below) define it and allow every young person to experience learning that is social, participatory, interest-driven and relevant to the opportunities of our time.

Interest-Powered

Interests foster the drive to gain knowledge and expertise. Research has repeatedly shown that when the topic is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes. Connected learning views interests and passions that are developed in a social context as essential elements.

Production Centered

Connected learning prizes the learning that comes from actively producing, creating, experimenting and designing because it promotes skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and for making meaningful contributions to today's rapidly changing work and social conditions.

Peer Supported

Connected learning thrives in a socially meaningful and knowledge-rich ecology of ongoing participation, self-expression and recognition. In their everyday exchanges with peers and friends, young people fluidly contribute, share and give feedback. Powered with possibilities made available by today's social media, this peer culture can produce learning that's engaging and powerful.

Shared Purpose

Today's social media and web-based communities provide unprecedented opportunities for caring adults, teachers, parents, learners and their peers to share interests and contribute to a common purpose. The potential of cross-generational learning and connection unfolds when centered on common goals.

Academically Oriented

Connected learning recognizes the importance of academic success for intellectual growth and as an avenue towards economic and political opportunity. When academic studies and institutions draw from and connect to young people's peer culture, communities and interest-driven pursuits, learners flourish and realize their true potential.

Openly-Networked

Connected learning environments link learning in school, home and community because learners achieve best when their learning is reinforced and supported in multiple settings. Online platforms can make learning resources abundant, accessible and visible across all learner settings. For more information, visit The Connected Learning Alliance.

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Educator Innovator - Powered by the National Writing Project

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Educator Innovator and its partners share the goal of creating more powerful and connected learning for youth through bringing together learning and leadership opportunities for teachers, youth workers, mentors, librarians, and museum educators that are open, re-mixable, and typically free or low-cost.

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Integrating Technology Helps to Connect Parents, Teachers, and Students

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Integrating Technology In The Classroom To Better Connect Parents, Teachers, And Students

While student learning often happens in the classrooms, education requires a support structure that goes far beyond school walls. An extensive set of systems -from administrative to experiential- work together to help every child learn.

While these systems should work together in seamless coordination, education technology too often contributes to their fracturing. Tech tools often present essential functions across multiple platforms - muddying the picture of student success and isolating students from teachers and administrators from parents. Teachers, parents, administrators, and students who share a commitment to education deserve equally unified technological solutions.

Education technology has long sought to solve the myriad and dynamic challenges that persist in the classroom. How do we give teachers back time to spend with their students? How do we include parents in their child's education? How do we put data to work improving outcomes? How do we give administrators, teachers, parents, and students access to the same, comprehensive, real-time information on the student's progress?

Integrating Technology In The Classroom: An Example

Technology cannot solve every challenge in education, but smart technological solutions improve communications, strengthen collaboration, and deliver results. At the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in San Antonio last week, I had an opportunity to see a number of new products and solutions that were launched that show a tremendous amount of potential to help answer a lot of questions around integrating more technology in and outside of the classroom to deliver better outcomes for administrators, teachers, parents, and students.

One example is PowerSchool's re-released Unified Classroom platform which provides a comprehensive package that gives educators a bird's eye view of their students and helps develop personalized learning experiences. With up-to-the-minute feedback teachers and parents can together identify problems and opportunities in a child's education. While the technological platform itself is important, so too are the analytical insights it makes possible.

The 2017 summer release of PowerSchool's Unified Classroom includes 6 major updates that users should be aware of:

1. New unified user experience designed in collaboration with educators that provides a unified calendar, notifications, events, notes, centralized actions, search, and reporting.

2. New 360-degree view of students progress enabling teachers and parents to track all aspects of a student's behavior, attendance, assignments, digital content usage, grades, discussions, wikiprojects, e-portfolio, and progress throughout their educational career.

3. New unified learning and assessment platform for personalized instruction that empower teachers and administrators to implement best practice instructional strategies.

4. New early warning and student progress analytics to provide real-time visibility into student performance to identify where they may be struggling based on attendance, student engagement, grades, and standard progress.

5. New student and parent portal with activity feed to drive increased engagement connecting the home to the classroom.

6. New platform support to securely integrate with other classroom tools: Increase security with a new embedded identity management system to help teachers securely integrate centralized account management.

Improvements in data collection and analysis can now offer a fuller picture of students' academic records and performance.

Teachers have long relied on their own observations and intuition to track student performance. However, with so many competing priorities, educators (and parents) can benefit from technologies that provide analysis and spot patterns in performance. Making this kind of data available enables a smart approach to personalized learning that can truly maximize a student's potential.

Teachers remain the center of high-quality education, and communication resulting in meaningful engagement with students is essential.

Tools that centralize information in an easy to use platform help teachers marry the kind of focus on individuals that is integral to personal development with data-based strategies that improve academic performance. As a result, teachers are able to cater their lessons and approaches to the unique needs of their students.
When a student needs academic intervention, the best time to identify the problem is now.
By integrating technology in the classroom, teachers and parents can track students' academic performance as it happens, and draw upon data from a student's entire academic career. When a student is encountering the same problem this year with trigonometry that was experienced last year with geometry, teachers and parents should register that pattern. This is the way we apply the tools of the information age to education.

Integrating technology in the classroom will allow our school system to utilize the framework of personalized learning on a massive scale.

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Why Integrating Technology In The Classroom Can Better Connect Parents, Teachers, And Students - eLearning Industry

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While student learning often happens in the classrooms, education requires a support structure that goes far beyond school walls. An extensive set of systems -from administrative to experiential- work together to help every child learn. While these systems should work together in seamless coordination, education technology too often contributes to their fracturing.

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Using Padlet as a means to integrate technology into the curriculum.

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Excel Spreadsheets is a great way to integrate technology. Students can enter data into charts and customize it however they choose. They can also add formulas and functions and create graphs as well.

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Here is the link to my class website.

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One of the ways teachers can integrate technology is to create graphics. Graphics help students by giving students visual representations or graphic organizers for their information.