Focus Question.

What is meant by “lesson development using technology?”

Lesson development refers to all activities that teachers do as they create, teach, and evaluate lessons with students. Lesson development involves a teacher’s decision about three elements of teaching lessons.

            (1) Academic Content

            (2) Teaching goals, methods, and procedures

            (3) Learning assessments

Lesson development using technology involves how teachers use electronic resources to facilitate these processes.

                                                    Phone Credit to Paolo Cappelletti

Summary

Chapter three starts off on focusing on the three important lesson developments. It is essential that the teacher knows what to teach. Every time they teach, teachers make choices about the facts, concepts, ideas, skills and understandings they intend to share with the students. After the teacher decides on what to teach, he or she will decide the teaching goals, methods, and procedures they will use in their classes. Teachers combine goals, methods, and procedures into formats for daily learning. Finally teachers need to know what students have learned. Learning assessments should occur before, during, and after teaching lessons. All of these developments are extremely important. Meeting educational standards is just as important in the educational field. Every teacher must make decisions about what to explore in detail, what to teach more broadly, and what to mention in passing. Curriculum frameworks and learning standards guide your choices of “what to teach” to make sure you are meeting those educational standards. On the other hand test assessments help you to understand how to asset and evaluate all learners. There are two basic assessments. The Norm-reference test and the Criterion-Reference test. Chapter three finishes off by talking about incorporating technology in performance assessment. There is a chart presented in the book that includes discussion questions, performance tasks, and a technology project. The technology projects really would have students engaged with the program PowerPoint which is an important tool to be able to use now-a-days.

Tech Tool Link

The tech tool link that I checked out was “RubiStar”. This Website allows for teachers to create their own rubrics. The Rubistar system provides a set of templates to choose from. The website is quick and simple. You must log onto http://4teachers.org/ and click on Rubistar on the right hand side. Once you have done that you scroll down to the bottom of the page to choose your topic template. There are templates for virtually anything, such as: Writing, Math, Multimedia, Science, Music, and much more. I would defiantly keep this site in mind when it comes to creating my own rubrics!

This is a excellent video that creates a twenty first century learning environment that combines technology and online going developments to help gain student achievements in the classrooms. This video is all about teaching and using these technology's proficiently. This video can be found directly on the http://4teachers.org/ website.

CHAPTER TWO

Focus Question: “How do students use technology for learning visually?" -Technology provides several different programs such as: Software programs, internet sites, videos, graphing calculators, and devices like telescopes and microscopes. All of these different programs provide information dynamically. Technology now-a-days can do things that in the past would not have been capable of. Technology now can reveal the ocean depths, the immenseness of the solar system, and the structural systems of the human body. We see things now that we would not have seen without the technology. Technologies teacher can use online simulations and experiments, 3D virtual reality presentations and tours, real-time data displays and analysis, online video clips, and so much more to promote learning threw visual experiments.

Photo Credit to Josh Monza

Summary: Chapter two of “Transforming learning with new technologies” first starts on highlighting the three learning theories. Educators tend to follow one of the three learning theories. The learning theories are: Behaviorism, Cognitive Science, and Constructivism. Behaviorism is a set of changes in human behavior created as a function of events in the environment. Therefore learning is a process of memorizing, demonstrating, and imitating. Cognitive Science on the other hand suggests that learning is also influenced by nonobservable and internal constructs, such as memory motivation, perception, attention and metacognitive skills. Finally constructivism claims that every person interprets and constructs the world in their own way. Therefore learning is a process of manipulating and interpreting the surrounding world in a unique way for each individual. Technology is now becoming an important asset to have in the classroom. Technology lets teachers conduct drill- and- practice learning of concepts through computer-based learning games, reviewing key material, and providing rich resources. Technology can expand the curriculum to include the world beyond the classroom; which is extremely important in my eyes! Also technology creates multiple opportunities for engagement and collaboration. Student- center classrooms highly revolve around student collaboration therefore incorporating technology into my classroom would help me tremendously. Technology promotes: student-conducted online polls and surveys, collaborative digital storytelling, digital games for learning translation software, and online posters and website publishing. My students will be active learners which the book states as "discovery learning, "learning by doing", "inquiry-based learning", or "hands on learning". This is ultimately what learning is all about; learning through action.

The video presentation I found below does a great job of enhances the differences between a teacher-centered classroom and a student-centered classroom. The presentation also talks about how technology has expanded our resources.

Video Presentation credit Patricia Galien

Tech Tool Question

Wayang Outpost

The tech tool link I checked out was the Wayange Outpost. This Website is designed to help prepare middle and high school students for standardized math tests such as the SAT, MCAS, and CASTAR. The website is very well organized and is simple to use, after a simple signing in and logging into your account students are then able to being practicing math problems.