TeachersTopic

TeachersTopic is a periodical feature about a subject of interest to the teaching community written by a prominent expert in the field. This month, Marsha Ratzel answers questions about Technology Integration and Assessment in your classroom. You can learn more about Marsha Ratzel at the end of the interview.

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Technology Integration and Assessment

Answers by Marsha Ratzel

1. Why is Technology Integration and Assessment such an important subject for teachers in today's classroom? In what ways can integrating technology into a classroom improve the experience for the students?

The first priority would be to amplify the learning that can be done. Using technology allows students to engage in tasks that mirror the real world much more closely. It allows them to interact and learn from people that they wouldn’t have access to using other means, and it allows teachers to communicate with students in the most familiar/comfortable way.

Take the first idea that you are able to help students work in more realistic settings than before. My science class is a perfect example. For years, we labored to fill out tables and draw graphs of our experimental data. It took lots of class time, as well as homework time, just to get the data into a form where you could start to analyze it.

Contrast that with today’s classroom…because of probeware, my students instantly collect the data. (Probeware is a piece of hardware/software that allows students to collect data from labs. There is usually some kind of sensor that detects data and sends that data to either a handheld device like a calculator or to a computer. The software then translates the data into different kinds of representation, such as an Excel spreadsheet or a graph. Most software allows students to show the data collected immediately so students are instantly able to start their analysis.) It is presented in multiple ways (as a thermometer, a graph, a table and a digital readout) so that different learning styles can be accommodated. Vernier is one place to find affordable and easy to implement probeware. My science classes now focus on the analysis of the experimental results instead of organizing and recording data.

This is much closer to the way in which real scientists work. It is a way of working that puts the emphasis on understanding the phenomenon and helps students ask questions…building their scientific curiosity and putting them in a place to want to do more to answer their questions.

Technology also allows my students to interact with people with whom they would have never had contact. I’ll have to admit that we’re on the beginning edge of this, but using video conferencing allows me to bring in expert guests. So, for example, when my math class was working on a scale drawing project, we were able to Skype in a parent who was a working architect. (Skype is a tool that allows you to “call” other Skype clients anywhere in the world via the internet) The slant he was able to give them was much more than I could provide as their teacher or that I could find on videotapes or in books.

Lastly, technology enables us to find ways to interact with our students in a way that makes sense to them. Many people call today’s students the Digital Natives, i.e. kids that don’t know anything but cell phones, computers, YouTube, downloading music and so on. (Go here for more information on digital natives.) Let me give you another example from a teacher next door to me. She is teaching a book study similar to what has been done for years. This year she was able to infuse the unit with music she found using her iPod and digital images she found in the digital archives of the Library of Congress. Imagine how her visually oriented kids react to seeing pictures of the 1800s and the Civil Rights movement as background for their book study. Suddenly the references in the book took on much more meaning….couple that with the fact she found an old recording of “Follow the Drinking Gourd”. I hear kids humming that through the halls. These digital mediums activate their interest which makes it easier for them to understand the novel.

Good teachers have always found ways to enhance the learning. Technology gives you more instructional strategies on how to do those enhancements.

The added bonus for students is that they build a strong background in using many kinds of applications and kinds of equipment. That will give them a head start, and even if what they were using to do math analysis changes, the newer version of software will be similar. They will just transfer what they learned about the older, simpler versions to the more powerful, newer versions. I would think this will prove invaluable as they search for jobs and can present a more sophisticated skill set to employers.

2. How do you recommend teachers implement such systems?

I think teachers can take one of two approaches: integrate something that makes sense in a good lesson you already teach---one that could use some extra sparkle OR find an application that you think fits the style of learning that is present in your classroom, learn the app, and then try a simple project with it.

The biggest thing to remember is to still be a good teacher. You will have to support the students in doing two things at once. They will have to show you content knowledge AND use new knowledge to make the application work. Small projects are the best. I remember hearing someone talk about how they implemented collaborative writing. The teacher immediately realized that a wiki could be the perfect instructional strategy for that kind of writing. Wikispaces and pbwiki are ones many teachers use. (I think of a wiki as an online writing spot. It's a place where different people can collaboratively write something, almost like a shared word processor.) But they didn't know much about wikis. So the teacher first created a page that was all about their likes and dislikes. They based this writing on what a Facebook page might look like and include. (You can see the teacher's wikipage here if you want to see the project in more detail.) With that tiny bit of personal experience under their belt, they then launched into creating the underlying scaffolding that would be needed to teach the students the difference between private/public information on the web, how to create a wiki page, how to upload images and so on. The brilliance of this project was that students were learning more about wiki in this project than content. With this knowledge on board, the teacher could move into the collaborative story writing that she really wanted to do.

Influencing others to follow, for me, is something that is better done quietly. Rather than trying to drag other people along with you, it seems better to let them watch what you are doing from a distance. Then as they feel like you didn't crash and burn with your integrated technology activity, and that students learned as much if not more than by using the traditional way...they'll ask. You can offer to help, give them all your stuff or plan with them. There a million different ways to support them.

3. Do you think technology integration will fall into the hands of the younger teachers who are generally more familiar with technology, or the veterans whose comfort level with the content gives them the freedom to experiment?

I guess I don't think it's really going to be one way or the other all the time. Younger teachers have advantages in that they think more like digital natives than teachers who have been teaching for years. But the older, more experienced teacher probably has a better intuitive sense about how to manage the classroom, set up the instructional activity and how to evaluate the results. Probably the best mix that I've had the pleasure of working with is a blend of the two.

4. One issue that keeps coming up around technology integration is the tendency of many teachers and schools to adopt new technologies to old ways of teaching. An LCD projector rather than an overhead. A SmartBoard rather than a wipeboard. Is there a difference between "technology integration" and "teaching 21st Century skills?"

I don't think this is unexpected. Most people have to hook new learning to things they already know. In fact, this might be the best way to get people to adopt new kinds of technology. What you hope is that once they have learned to do the "old" things, they begin to realize that "they can" do the new technology and with that recognition, they are willing to venture beyond the familiar. For example, if you simply display your class agenda on the SmartBoard, it might be your first step. The next step I've seen teachers around me take is to project a piece of writing and start class editing lessons. With a little technology support, they are able to "see" how to get students to the board to edit.

In the most radical forms, 21st century learning is quite different from this. That is because I feel like 21st century learning requires the student to take on a whole new role. In the situation above, the teacher is the creator of the lesson, has the knowledge and controls the learning. What I think teaching in this style requires, is realizing that the student should be the creator of the knowledge, picks the tool that is the best conveyor of the information and presents it.

My best example of how I'm trying to do this would be a project we did on the forces inside the Earth. Students picked a topic of interest to them (from my curriculum), completed their research and then used a voicethread kind of application to enter into a discussion with others.

Voicethread reminds old timers like me of PowerPoints, but the enhancement to viewing slides about something is that a Voicethread allows the author to have a conversation with viewers. As a viewer looks at the presentation, they can leave comments or questions for other viewers and the author. A dialog breaks out where the student is the instigator of the conversation and they control and moderate how the dialog progresses. The teacher certainly facilitates this process by teaching online safety, the technical aspects of creating Voicethreads, teaching science concepts and how to research. I had almost 60 separate conversations going on at the same time, and they were amazingly different but all were focused on understanding more about how the Earth works.

In order to undertake this kind of lesson, you have to learn to let go of control and you must equip students with new kinds of knowledge. For this project that meant knowing what it means to moderate a conversation and how to be safe online. They had to learn how to leave high quality comments for others and how to respond to others' comments. That’s something we haven't really done before in education. I believe it is a step in the direction of becoming more real world like in how we approach learning. Think about how Amazon or Turbo Tax allows it's customers to communicate with each other in the forums of those large corporations. Customer generated solutions and innovations may be the next wave of globalization.

5. What do you think is the biggest issue in ensuring that the integrating of technology is used to improve the experience of students in the classroom?

When technology is used to teach the ideas and concepts of that classroom's curriculum, then it has the potential to improve the experience of students. If it is used to amplify what is possible by using traditional methods or to consider aspects/investigate ideas that weren't accessible before, then it can have a huge impact.

But when technology is taught simply to make sure they "know" an application, it doesn't help much. Sure kids will love it. I guess it comes down to the question I ask myself....is the time I invest teaching how to use the technology worth the payoff kids get in learning this concept? If the answer is yes, then I use technology.

For example in my math lesson today, we were considering the difference between theoretical and experimental probability. The traditional lesson calls for them to flip a coin 30 times. With 6th graders that means the coins will be rolling on the floor and it will take the entire 40 minutes to generate enough data to look at the difference between the types of probability.

Instead, I used an online virtual manipulative website to flip the coin. I modified the lesson to generate data over the course of the entire year. We were able to do this, using the SmartBoard with students recording the data, in about 20 minutes. That prompted them to ask, "What if you flipped it more than 30 times, how about 100 times, how about 1000 times even...how about 1,000,000 times. The technology allowed us to investigate the experimental results within the next 5 or 6 minutes.

By the end of this first class period, we were able to investigate much, much more about the probabilities associated with flipping coins than when we had to do it the "old fashion" way. They still had fun because they love the SmartBoard, manipulating the virtual manipulative and writing in colors. But they learned 4 times more.

I think we just need to collect, distribute, teach each other how to utilize technology in ways that it makes our learning more powerful. Don’t just learn technology so you can say you've learned technology. Think about your "real life". You don't learn how to use some new gadget just for the fun of it (OK...maybe some of us do but we're geeks). You learn it because it makes your task or life better; it allows you to do things you couldn't do before. It's the same way in the classroom.

6. Are there ways that teachers in schools with less means can integrate technology into their classrooms?

Funding is always a concern for teachers. Not only to acquire the new technology but then to service it and to learn how to use it.

The good news for technology funding is that there seems to be grant money around. It may take more work in order to get access to it, but it's there. For example, the Best Buy stores have a once a year grant they make to teachers’ classrooms. You have to read through the grant application and answer some questions and propose a budget, but it isn't something that is too burdensome. I know that I have seen many grant opportunities listed in the back of the monthly National Science Teacher's Association newspaper that comes. Funding your ideas in this way involves taking the long view. You have to search out the options, figure out which ones you qualify for or match up well with, and plan ahead. Many of these awards are specifically targeted at schools that have less means and probably put you at the head of the line.

eBay-type places also offer an affordable way to get equipment. I know I have always longed for electronic balances. They are super expensive. I used my local Craig's List and found someone who was closing their store and had electronic balances for $10 each. Once I got there and explained they were for my classroom, he sold me 3 for $10. These are much more sophisticated than what I would have bought brand new from the district vender, but they are wonderful (we just don't use all the fancy stuff!!!!). I found another steal at my local Blockbuster. I wanted one of those Flip Cameras for my classroom but they were running in excess of $125. When the next version came out, my neighborhood store put all the old models on sale. I watched them cut the price three times. Once they were finally at $50, I bought one. I know it isn't the fancy new model, but it's great for my sixth graders. I do hesitate to mention this option because I feel like teachers already have to pay so much from their own pocket, but it is something to consider if you are in a situation where you can't live without ___________. Or, maybe your principal would be willing to pay from school budgets.

In terms of training yourself, there are so many low cost, no-cost options out there. YouTube and TeacherTube are full of instructional videos. Through our state library system, we have access for free to something called Atomic Learning. AL offers bite size pieces of a wide variety of technology tools so that you can take on only what you need or think you can master. Apple has a similar library of tutorials. Would it be preferable if we could go to a weeklong retreat and learn? You bet. But I don't think that even one day of technology training will be in the future of some teachers I know, so it may be important to consider these options.

Keep your eyes open for all sorts of free training. Last summer I wanted to learn about wikis and it happened that pbwiki held a free summer camp. Hundreds of teachers from across the world signed up. Each week they had guest speakers, step-by-step assignments to walk you through creation and building a wiki for students, and homework to make sure the teachers had mastered the necessary skills. By the end, I knew enough to strike out on my own. Even if you missed the actual training, lots of training is archived online and you can look through chat transcripts or listen to archived podcasts. You also might find that government sponsored agencies offer training. For example, I needed to learn more about weather. The American Meteorological Society offers a free online class covering everything I will ever need to know and has materials that I can use immediately with my students. I know that in math, The Math Forum offers online learning for a small cost. Check out the big teacher content groups for more opportunities.

About Marsha Ratzel

Marsha Ratzel is a middle school math/science teacher in Leawood, Kansas and is Nationally Board Certified in EA Science, is a member of the Teacher Leaders Network and worked as a hospital administrator before becoming a teacher about 20 years ago. Marsha also blogs about teaching at www.teachingtechie.typepad.com.