Helping Teachers Incorporate Technology in the Classroom

Clearing Hurdles

By Donna M. Dick

Donna Dick believes that technology is the key to improve student achievement. However, if teachers do not receive high quality professional development, then technology will never be able to fulfill the role of improving student achievement. Donna teaches an introductory computer class for teachers with an emphasis on Internet resources and programs such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Donna comes across many teachers that feel too intimidated to incorporate technology into the classroom. To make her students (the teachers) feel more at ease with using technology, Donna does an activity with them that is based on the tasks that teachers already do and are comfortable with and adding a technological component to it.

Donna splits up the teachers into groups of four or five. It is up to the teachers to make a chart of some activities that they do with their students. Once those activities are talked about the teachers must then figure out a way to incorporate technology into that activity. Once the technology is incorporated the teachers list the student benefits of this activity, including the technology. Here is an example of what one group of teachers came up with:

• Current Activity: Book Report
• Adding Technology: Word processing. Database with fields for title, author, publisher, date, genre, summary, and recommendation. Internet for author information. Accelerated Reader Software.
• Student Benefits: Word processing allows students to produce professional-looking reports that motivate students. Use of a database allows students to share information. Accelerated Reader motivates students to read and has score keeping.

Once the teachers are finished within their groups they come together as a whole to discuss their ideas. This class helps teachers who are too intimidated by technology to see some ideas and student benefits of how technology can work in the classroom.

When I become a teacher I do plan on going to seminars or taking classes that will keep me up to date on all the technology that is out there. I don't think it's enough to just take one technology class in college and think that you will be prepared to incorporate technology in your own classroom. Technology is improving all the time so I think it's important for teachers to constantly learn new techniques and activities that will benefit their students. I'm glad to hear that there are introductory technology classes for those teachers that still don't know or are too intimidated to incorporate technology in their classrooms.

"Recorder Teacher"

In the Key of "See and Hear": How Students Can Learn to Play the Recorder by Playing Musical Computers

By Richard W. Dillon

This article, written by Richard Dillon, explains the benefits of using "Recorder Teacher" in the classroom. "Recorder Teacher" is a software that teaches music concepts through the study of the recorder. Dillon suggests for teachers to navigate their students through the program and its main menu before allowing students to do it on their own. There are many different sections for students to link to through the main menu. Some options include: the first 5 notes, tuning & sound, finger chart, listening, reading a note, and recorder family. Dillon explains that his students' favorite section is the "tunes" section. Here, students can create their own songs by dragging notes and rests onto a staff that is displayed on the screen. Once the song is completed students can play it or just watch the on screen notes change colors as the song is played and see the fingerings displayed on a recorder on the screen. Since the software allows students to hear and see the recorder play a song, more of the students' senses are involved which often means that more of the learning will be retained. Another favorite for students is the "finger chart". This area shows and describes for the students on how to finger a certain note. Hands are color-coded for students to reduce the amount of confusion when trying to finger a note.

I could see myself using this software in my classroom. It seems like this software inspires students to be more involved in music. I'm not sure if it is required in the state of California to have third graders begin music lessons but I have personally observed two third grade classrooms that would take a weekly music course with recorders. If music lessons are required in the third grade then I think this software would be very beneficial to second or even first graders. "Recorder Teacher" would help prepare students before they actually had the chance to play an actual recorder. The "Recorder Teacher" not only helps students with music concepts but it also helps them work with computers. Students can navigate through many different sections from the main menu. I would let my students work with "Recorder Teacher" on their free time or as a reward. I think that it would be very rewarding and fun for the students to compose their own songs.

Enhancing a Classic Project with the Help of Technology

Digital Profiles in Poetry: An Updated Silhouette Project
By Joanne Fortunato

I can remember doing this silhouette project when I was in the 4th grade. In those days the teachers were still using the overhead projector as a means to capture your profile silhouette. Today the project can be done with a digital camera and a software program that has drawing tools. Each student needs a buddy to take the profile picture of themselves. While the one digital camera was being passed around the other students were to work on the poetry aspect of the project. Joanne Fortunato assigned for the students to write a self expressive poem. The students were to create an acrostic poem using the letters of their name. Fortunato made it very clear that mundane words such as "nice" or "awesome" were not acceptable. Having students look up adjectives that described themselves helped them to increase their vocabulary. It also made the students use books such as the dictionary and thesaurus to find synonyms of words. Once the silhouettes were on the computer the students could them add pictures or patterns within the silhouette to make it more creative and representative of themselves.

Now that digital cameras are becoming easier to use and less expensive I would definitely use them as a way to capture students' silhouettes. This project is such a classic and very memorable to students. By incorporating an acrostic poem using the student's names and positive adjectives that describe them it helps the students to view themselves in a positive light. Software programs that allow students to edit their picture and add drawing to their profile makes this project more relevant to the times.

The Benefits of Digital Images

Digital Images in the Science Classroom

By: Randy L. Bell, John C. Park, and Doug Toti

This article explains the benefits of using digital images in the classroom but especially when learning about science. The authors explain that students can better understand a scientific phenomenon when they can see images of it. Science textbooks are therefore filled with images and diagrams so that students can better understand the facts of science. Other than digital images, microscopes are also used in science classes to display images. Even though microscopes are a great way to get “hands-on” in the classroom, the authors did list a couple of drawbacks that come with working with microscopes. 1. It is hard for some students to manipulate the microscope to focus on the images and 2. Teachers use most of their instructional time helping students see what they are supposed to be seeing which doesn’t leave a lot of time to teach the curriculum. The article leans more towards digital images and especially time lapse video. Using time lapse video can make an abstract concept, such as plant movement, more concrete and easier for the students to understand. With the time lapse video students can see the way a plant moves and grows from just being a seed to being a big plant or flower.

A pre-service teacher, Anne Bowen, used digital images in her class to demonstrate a butterfly’s life cycle. The assignment was called, “The Butterfly Project.” Instead of having her students read about the butterfly life cycle from a textbook, Bowen assigned for her students to take digital pictures of butterflies at different stages of their life cycle. The students essentially captured the metamorphosis of butterflies with digital images which allowed them to analyze and talk about them further in their classroom. Using digital images of natural phenomena changes the students’ role from passive observer to engaged participants.

I would use digital images in my classroom to help my students understand abstract concepts. Doing an assignment similar to "The Butterfly Project" would really get the students involved in a "hands-on" way. Doing any hands-on activity with younger students will be more fun to them than just lecturing to them. If students are more involved in the assignments then they will probably remember more of what they learned. Using digital images is a good way to get the students involved.

High School Authors

See Jane Read... See Johnny Write: An electronic book project brings together elementary and high school students and helps the high schoolers learn to write for audience.

By Lyn C. Howell

Howell, a high school writing teacher from New Mexico, collaborated with her sisters second grade class in Georgia to create an electronic book project. At first Howell explained how she used to do the project with actual letters instead of emails and actual books instead of PowerPoint books. There were many drawbacks to the traditional way of doing this project but doing the project with technology made things less time consuming, easier, and more fun. This electronic book project benefited both the high schoolers and the second graders. For the high schoolers, they learned how to put a PowerPoint together, practiced writing in a very vivid and descriptive manner, and they had to focus on brainstorming so that the book would flow and make sense to the second graders. The second graders benefited because they were able to email back and forth with their high school buddy, and they were experiencing a new media for reading which encouraged literacy.

There was one part of the article that really impressed me. Howell had a couple of English Language Learners whose primary language was Spanish. So Howell asked her sister, the second grade teacher, if she had any students who spoke and read Spanish; and sure enough she did. So Howell allowed her ELL students to write their books in Spanish. I just thought this was a great way to modify an assignment so that the Spanish speakers would get as much out of this as the other students.

Overall, I would be interested in involving myself and my future students in a project like this one. I think its a great idea and I like how both classrooms would benefit from this project. Thank goodness for technology because it makes projects like these a lot easier and cheaper for the students and the teachers. Howell explained how expensive it was to send 30 hard copies of books through the mail but having the books as a PowerPoint and emailing them to the second grade teacher made it completely free.