Check out my store:

6th, 7th, 8th - Science, Education - TeachersPayTeachers.com

June 18, 2009

Guiding Principles for Using Technology

Guiding Principles for Using Technology

Ultimate Goal: enhance student learning.

Technology should be used to:
1. Address worthwhile science in ways that are pedagogically appropriate.
2. Make scientific views more accessible.
3. Enhance another teaching strategy.
4. Provide tools that facilitate and enhance instruction through improving data collection, visualization of abstract phenomena, and simulations of experiments that would otherwise be impossible in school classrooms.
5. Help students explore topics in more depth and in more interactive ways.
6. To promote more student-centered, inquiry-based learning.
7. Facilitate communication and collaboration.
8. Allow students to explore data, make predictions, and form conclusions.
9. Guide student discovery.
10. Prepare students to be competitive and successful with the digital revolution.
11. Transform the ways that teachers teach and students learn.
12. Enhance scientific understandings through imagery and visualization.
13. Stretch the boundaries of what is possible in the science classroom.
14. Engage student participation and interest.

Examples of how to use technology to create new and different learning experiences for our students:
• Allow students to learn from people they never would have been able to without the technology.
• Allow students to interact with information in a way that is meaningful and could not have happened otherwise.
• Allow students to create and share their knowledge with an audience they never would have had access to without the technology.
• Push students and the teacher to new heights, new learning, and new knowledge.

4 comments:

  1. Wow Quinn,

    That's quite a list. I like #14. As a special ed teacher, I get into a lot of different rooms and get to watch a lot of different teachers. It is very apparent that students in the rooms of teachers who adhere to lecture/test format are not very engaged. Those students spend a lot of time texting under their desks. A bit of technology infusion may go a long way toward student engagement.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice list Quinn, I think we liked a lot of the same parts from the book! I like how clearly you presented them though, I just rambled on.
    I have been thinking about your number 10: "Prepare students to be competitive and successful with the digital revolution." This has always been important to me, but now I feel that it goes against some of the fundamentals of integrating technology into the Science classroom that the book discussed (eg. "Technology provides a means to good science instruction but is not a mean in itself." I think the fact that the students will be competent in a technology tool (eg. powerpoint or using probes) that will likely come in handy in college or jobs should also be considered a beneficial use of tech in the classroom, but playing devil's advocate a bit... to what extent is it our responsibility as Science teachers to make this part of our teaching goals? and if its not ours, whose responsibility is it to prepare them for this digital revolution that is going on all around them?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good point Marta! To me, preparing students to live in this digital age means to teach them real life skills such as:
    -how to collaborate, communicate and work with other students (who may be in the same classroom or in China).
    -how to effectively communicate the results of their research or experiments to others
    -how to effectively research and obtain valid scientific (or nonscientific) information
    I believe it is our responsibility (as teachers) to help develop these skills in our students. I don't mean to work on these skills in a mutually exclusive way. I think they can be tied to many of the science standards we are required to teach and they should be used to enhance the other teaching styles we already use. To me, they go hand in hand. -Quinn

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Quinn,

    I like your guiding principles. I think most of us will have similar ideas about our expectations, but you did a nice job of being more specific. Good job!

    ReplyDelete