2. Menu I will show how educational technology is crucial for this generation to be successful in the workforce of the 21 st century by emphasizing on the development we are providing. Learning Environment Opportunities Available Student Achievement Start Conclusion Bibliography
Hi, My name is Julie Vancura and I am going to be doing a presentation on educational technology with in our school district
The point of this presentation is to show how educational technology is crucial for this generation to be successful in the workforce of the 21 st century by emphasizing on the development we are providing as a district. The three main topics include opportunities available to the students, the learning environment we are providing from the physical format to the non-physical and the student achievement improvements due to integrating technology into the school district.
Some topics we need to discuss before we try to move forward by integrating educational technology, the first is we need to have an understanding of where we are at. What is available to the students at this point in time. Second there is a professor John Schacter that has put together over 700 different studies and gave not only the positives but the negatives as well.
The three items that come to mind that every student has access to in their daily lives in the 21 st century are a computer, some sort of I pod or mp3 players and a cell phone. Only of these are allowed to be used with in the school district and that would be a computer. With computers we also need to provide the a word processor that the students will be able to use to type papers and prepare presentations. Another aspect of the computer is having constant internet connections available. This will allow the student to research for there papers and projects. Having the internet will also provide the teachers with the possibilities of creating a home page that can have a syllabus containing due dates and upcoming projects, also is another way to reach out to the students by posting answers to homework assignments or tests.
John Schatcter has put together over 700 different studies and within each study he has included some positives and negatives to integrating educational technology. The two studies we are going to take a closer look at are Kulik’s Meta – Analysis Study and the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT). Kulik’s Meta – Analysis Study assessed computer based instructions including a tutorial than a drill and then some practice. The positives included that using this type of instruction helped the students learn at a faster rate and was more enjoyable to the learners. One of the negatives was that the positives did not happen in all the area that were studied. The next study is ACOT which assessed the impact of Interactive technology on teaching and learning in five school sites. This study encouraged instructional innovation, emphasize to teachers technology, use of long term projects, use of multiple resources and cooperative learning. The positives include a new type of learning which results in an increase of reasoning along with teacher practices having to change. The negatives that were found include no differences in the standardized testing.
When integrating technology into the educational system you need to be able to create a learning environment for higher level thinking. In order to do this we need to be able to reach all of our students including those with extra needs and understand the capabilities of the teachers and their roles as being educators.
Making sure we reach all students is a key element that will allow us to achieve our goals of making them prepared for the 21 st century. The hearing impaired is just one example of students that could benefit from the use of technology. There was a study done by Ferhan H. Odabasi and many others that provided the use of mobile technology like a palm to see if that would benefit them fitting into society better as they are just as knowledgeable as the next person. I think this is just one way to make sure that all students have the same ample opportunities to learn and use the technology that is available to them. There are some other ways that we can go about reaching our goals through the students and they include allowing them time to work with the technology individually and through a group. Both ways produce positive outcomes for the students. Working individually gives the students independence, problem solving skills, and allows them to practice what they have learned on their own – more or less individual critical thinking. While working with a group creates social skills, being open to others opinions – learning to respect human diversity – and problem solving within a group. These skills are needed in order for all of our students to compete in the workforce of the 21 st century.
With this slide I wanted to take the time to discuss the capabilities of the teachers. There are two different ways that a teacher can go about integrating technology into their daily school plans and those would be positive and negative. Now these go hand in hand, teachers need to create the positive learning environment for our students. They are the role models, therefore if they believe in using the technology they are more than likely going to do so. If they struggle they will not want to put up with the “headache” of it as the saying goes. With this being said we have a job to do, we need to make sure that all of our teachers are learning how each of our educational technology programs work and how they will be beneficial to them. Creating a positive learning environment is one of the most important teaching tools. How it is portrayed is how the students will take it. All teachers should have the opportunities to implement technology-rich instructional activities and be able to integrate the technology with a curriculum that creates a high level of thinking. In order to do this there should be some teacher work shops that are specifically working with the technology programs – one showing how to use them and one showing how to troubleshoot within them.
The reason we are so keen on getting technology into the educational setting is all about allowing students to achieve at a higher level of thinking. Students can achieve in a number of different aspects the two that I will be looking at is how they achieve individually and statistically through using some more of John Schacters studies.
In some of the studies that I looked at, a number of students became more independent and were able to learn on their own through using educational technology. Some other achievements that were found included an increase in self – esteem and self – concept as they were able to figure things out on their own and lastly due to the higher level of thinking they also achieved a higher level of reasoning. Looking at these studies from a statistically angle Schacter completed a study, Harold Wenglinsky’s National Study of Technology’s Impact on Mathematics Achievement – this study assessed the effects of stimulation and higher order of thinking technologies on a national sample of 4 th and 8 th grade mathematics achievement of the national assessment of educational progress. Both 4 th and 8 th graders improved and had higher math achievement while creating a positive climate. Another study was West Virginia’s Basic Skills/Computer Education (BS/CE) State Wide Initiative – this study analyzed a representative sample of 5 th graders achievement from 18 different elementary schools across the state. - the more participation they received equaled the better scores they recorded - the scores were equal among the boys and the females, which was something they were keeping track of.
Looking back we have discussed the opportunities available to the students – what is available to them currently, also looked at some possibilities for the future by researching some studies done by John Schacter. Secondly, we looked at the type of learning environment we are creating – making sure we reach all of our students and being able to teach in each perspectives style along with the capabilities of the teachers, making sure they have a positive attitude when it comes to implementing educational technology into their daily school plans. Lastly we took a look at some more studies that have shown us how important educational technology can be through the students achievements. Just by including technology into their school day we are preparing them to be able to make into the workforce of the 21 st century.
