Technology Integration » How teachers use technology

We’re Inspired !

Brad Edwards — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:56:47 +0000

This week I spent a day with the 6th graders. I’ve been working all year with this group of students but with a science teacher. Today, their Language Arts teacher wanted me to show them how to use Inspiration to help them plan their writing piece about their career study. These students were right on task. I was really pleased to see how well the listened and how well they organized their work. When they put their ideas together in Inspiration and saw that their outline was done for them, including the notes they could add, they were hooked. It was a new program for them.

This program isn’t in their docs, so I had to help two or three in each class find it. Some are still struggling to find things, and I think there will always be those. Overall, 95% of them get it.

At first, students were taken by the Inspiration icons, wanting to choose just the right one. Eventually, after the first group, I learned that this was a distraction from the lesson and that organization of ideas needed to be the focus. Between the first lesson and the second (one afternoon to the next morning), their teacher emailed me her Inspiration model. We put that up on the screen. While she talked about it, I clicked through it. Good experience team teaching, especially today. I’m reminded about the recent experience with Canvastic. As a graphic organizer, Inspiration is extremely powerful since it gives students the visual cues about their thought process prior to writing. I wish I had had this when I was in the 6th grade: outlining was never much fun for me !

I can’t wait to see how well these 6th graders will be doing with their one to one laptop program as they enter 7th grade next fall. They’re already far ahead of this year’s 7th graders and this year’s 7th graders are far ahead of this year’s 8th.

“Wicked Good” Problems

Brad Edwards — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:30:03 +0000

A wicked problem is defined as one with a complex solution, and that the solution itself will probably open up more problems to tackle as the solver works through the original problem. The variables make the solution very hard to figure out; add to that the changing nature of technology, and you’ve got a “wicked good wicked problem.” “Wicked Good” is a common oxymoronic expression here in Maine.

This in itself is enough of a brick wall to send teachers back to their foxholes and prevent them from using technology on their own, and gets in the way of schools moving forward.

Teachers as knowers of all things….

Brad Edwards — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:41:23 +0000

Historically, educators have been expected to know their subject matter. This hasn’t changed, of course, but the amount to know has. When teachers come into the computer lab, they often feel out of place. A 500 page manual on how to use Office is overwhelming. Teachers haven’t had time to study it, to really learn any of it. In fact, they have barely had time to open the manual, relying on the technology integrationist to figure it all out.
A defining moment in my own teaching with technology was in the fall of 1996. We had a brand new windows 95 lab with a 56KB frame connection. It was my first time with Windows. I had a manual, had skimmed it, had practiced a bit, but found the entire thing rather daunting. A student asked me a question to which I had no clue how to answer. So I responded with a question, “Who can help us find that answer?” Well, several hands shot up, and we had several things to try out. Together, we figured it all out, and were well on our way to working on our presentations and research. This was the first time I saw the benefit of collaborative learning with technology.
The next thing I did was to assign a Virtual Travel project. Students were to plan a trip. But after a student asked me, “Can we travel with a friend?” and I said of course, then the collaboration made the trip become very real to them. Collaboration gives the learner control; the greater the learner control, the longer the learning sticks, and the more meaningful the experience becomes to our students.

Substitution

Brad Edwards — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:32:45 +0000

This week a fifth grade teacher brought in the entire fifth grade, one group of 20 or so at a time, as they were typing their research papers. I was amazed at the four and five page papers they had written complete with bibliography. But what surprised me more was the way the computer was used as a typewriter. No on line picture hunts. What I could determine, no on line searching, no use of Kidspriation to organize thoughts. Just the typewriter function of the computer. This is a good example of substitution. Now the challenge is to move the cheese in a way that the teacher will be comfortable with the change. More on that later.