Revisiting My Guiding Principles

Ultimate Goal: enhance student learning. Do not focus on technology just for the sake of doing technology!

Technology should be used to:
1. Address worthwhile science in ways that are pedagogically appropriate. An example would be using online data sets or simulations to teach abstract concepts.
2. Make scientific views more accessible.
3. Enhance another teaching strategy. Technology becomes another tool in my bag of tricks.
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. This goes along with teaching abstract science concepts and inquiry-based learning.
5. Help students explore topics in more depth and in more interactive ways. Personal Learning Networks work well here because they will help students collaborate with other students.
6. To promote more student-centered, inquiry-based learning. This will be my primary focus for the upcoming school year and will be teamed up with technology through the use of online data sets and online inquiry-based explorations, such as project Wise.
7. Facilitate communication and collaboration.
8. Allow students to explore data, make predictions, and form conclusions.
9. Guide student discovery.
10. Transform the ways that teachers teach and students learn.
11. Enhance scientific understandings through imagery and visualization.
12. Stretch the boundaries of what is possible in the science classroom.
13. 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.