Technology and Academic Achievement

Technology and Academic Achievement

This article written by Les Foltos has led me to think even more about the enormous responsibility that I have as a teacher. Being actualized and conscious about the academic learning necessities that our students have is very important. Our mission then would be to prepare them to reach the new social labor skills in which they will be required.

In recent years, schools have increased the use of technology in the classroom, so they have distributed the necessary equipment to improve teaching and learning process. However, some parts of the society question the reality of this investment in terms of real knowledge achievement. Meanwhile, supporters of educational technology believe in academic achievement and scientific progress that a student would gain by being effectively exposed of the use of these technological advances.

New research has published a growing body of factual evidence of the positive role that technology can provide in academic achievement. Teachers must be trained to apply technology and encourage the students to develop the necessary skills to resolve problems.

This means that schools and districts must adopt the urgent necessity to promote technological professional development to their teachers. This training must be complete and not just conform with being familiar with the basic skills. Teachers need opportunities to work with colleagues, and, as the author said in this article, they need a continued interaction in their school building and beyond. Teachers need to share ideas and learn. Professional development needs to be ongoing to provide an effective model instruction.

Educational technology being conducted in the classroom is promoting a positive impact that challenges educators to accept and promote. In this period of time, it is impossible to isolate technology as a variable in good instruction. As good effective teachers, we must embrace the powerful learning tools that technology is offering us. We must find the right strategies to apply in our class setting to achieve our goals effectively.

Blogging In the classroom

Blogging In the classroom

Anne Davies takes huge steps further to help students to develop writing skills and critical thinking by using the blog. Nevertheless, students must be aware of using adequately this learning tool where they would share smart opinions with a worldwide audience. Anne Davies strongly believes that not just by exposing the students on blogs these skills will be developed. It is necessary the immediate teacher intervention to establish the proper methodological connections between different types of writing. She believes that teachers would have an incredible possibility to build a unique and very attractive pedagogy to teach by using blogs in the classroom.

In my opinion, I believe that as educators, facilitating and updating learning is our responsibility. Without forgetting that we also are part of this process, if we adapt new ways to make simple and interesting our daily learning exposure everybody would benefit. For example, we can promote the use of blogging inside of the classroom by creating a reflective journal. Teachers would provide information about some strategies that have worked inside of the classroom or did not work. Teachers can share this information and give an informal feedback.

As a teacher we can provide some other tips to other teachers like fun teaching activities that we can use in the classroom or simply to explore and learn important teaching techniques that many websites provide us.

If we want to create a coordinated class blog it could help us to inform the students in a very organized way about homework assignments where they have to respond on their own blogs. The coolest thing about this is that students become aware of what they are doing and how they are doing it.

The information that they post on their blogs would be visible to many people outside of the classroom or even outside of school to respond to. That kind of activity motivates to our students to be critical thinkers, but, of course, teachers must provide them with the necessary information to let them know what they are doing.

These were the activities that most interest me from this article to apply in further time in my own classroom blog setting.

Create an online book club to promote critical interactive sharing replies.

Provide online readings for your students to read and react to.

Provide vocabulary activities, which build grammar skills.

Post assignments based on literature readings and have students respond on their own weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work.

Communicate with parents and promote continual interaction to their children educational development.

Build a class newsletter, promoting student-written skills and other computer learned basics.

For instance, promoting the use of blogs in the classroom it would provide an enormous opportunity for our students to interact with many people sharing their personal thoughts more constructively. Students would have access to put in practice what they have learned fostering their personal education, making it relevant.

The attributes that blogging represents to us as a teachers would revolutionize our pedagogies. We can develop strong, fun and easy access to interaction with our students, parents and other teachers with more effectiveness. Let’s try these new challenges to become better teachers.

Teaching Strategies/Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Strategies: The Teaching Philosophy/Teaching Statement

What?! It was my first reaction when I had to work on this new concept. My first encounter creating a teaching philosophy was in my ED560 Diversity class. When I started writing it, I felt that I became more connected and more serious in my beliefs about education. Then, with a lot of surprise, I heard that it works much better when you offer to your administrator your teaching philosophy at the beginning of the year. I am very happy to have started this.

When I started reading this article, I began realizing how important it is to have a statement or philosophy. That seems to be becoming a common expected part of academic life. Faculties are increasingly developing teaching statements as they approach tenure to help the promotion of their particular views of their practical teaching. Consequently, a lot instructors at all levels find that writing their statement helps them develop, as teachers, nice personal teaching environments where students can identify.

I looked trough some other links that this site offered like Rackham-CRLT May Seminar on Preparing Future Faculty, which offers overviews and suggestions for getting started, as well as examples of statements. Also, this site contains a library of teaching philosophies. Wow! This is an excellent source to help us to create our teaching portfolio. I opened this link which provided several very practical samples of Philosophy teaching statements and general formatting suggestions. After that I create my Teaching pre-teaching philosophy. I still working on it and once it get done I would share it with you!

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It is not easy to achieve what we want. Frustration sometimes comes to my mind, and tends to convince me to quit. But, as my teachers told me, I need to embrace my dreams and make a tangible true attempt to approach and defeat any obstacle that I would face. If I think that I can do it, I can do it because my mind is my real self and once I get what I have worked on, an enormous satisfaction will come, letting me give thanks to all my teachers who let me project myself. Then, I will never shut my mind off of dreaming and never give up my dreams. I know I am going to make it no mater how much time and effort it will take me.
Teaching Philosophy
Becoming a teacher, I would want to be a bridge between cultures, helping communities to be part of the whole integrated society. I want to share values and common sense. I want to feel part of this change. I want to learn and be part of breaking false misconceptions. I want to make a difference by inspiring others to keep following the heartbeat of their dreams. As my best teachers taught me, I want to teach that, with a lot of patience and love, we can make all of our earthly goals reachable if we think that we can do anything.

Although some times I may even hesitate, wondering if I am the right person to teach others, and whether it is really worth it, I have confidence and I know I will make it if I keep trying, and I can teach others by my example.

My enormous desire to help the youth has let me know more about my own self and the role that I personally play in the community. I believe in multiculturalism, and being part of the creation of a balanced world. Nevertheless, we need to keep working to promote a nice social environment. Even if I feel like I am falling, I will look for new educational experiences to keep me motivated to learn and to share with others the new innovations and motivations to keep us in an interactive social vanguard.

Ana Viridiana Mercado Ratliff ♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣

self-efficacy teaching

Teachers’ self-efficacy teaching with technology

By Peter R. Albion____________________________________________

Information technology in education has shifted towards curriculum integration. Consequently, teacher education programs need to prepare graduates for teaching with IT. Graduates should possess both skills in the use of IT and belief in their capacity to integrate IT into teaching. Teachers’ self –efficacy in actual interaction with IT, can provide an enormous feed back in the process of evaluating the long term impact of performed courses after taking the new technology used design.

Providing equipment to schools was a necessity, provoking a futuristic vision to prepare students with real needed skills to be functional in the society. The first approach with this new technology was when Queensland government provided equipment and shifted to the new concept of information and communication technology (ICT) in education focused for its use as integration into the curriculum. In the words of current Queensland policy, information technology should be applied "to effective learning and teaching in all key learning areas, P12"(Education Queensland, 1998b). In Queensland, the most recent policy initiative included competencies that are to be achieved by all teachers in the state education system within the three year span of the program (Education Queensland, 1998a).

Although, there are no stated requirements for graduating teachers to meet these standards prior to employment, it seems that employers of teachers will soon expect that applicants and current employees become capable with respect to ICT. Then, a necessary training would be required to address these actual issues using strategies such as new technology standards for teacher education programs.

The way that teachers address the use of technology in the class setting could be the result of multiple factors including the accessibility, nature of the curriculum, time and personal capabilities to be adaptable into the new era of technology. However, relevant evidence suggests that teachers' beliefs in their capacity to work effectively with technology are a significant factor in determining the use of the computer in the classroom. Studies of computer use during teaching practicum have found that, despite possessing positive dispositions towards computer use, pre-service teachers lacked confidence in their capacity to teach successfully with computers. (Albion, 1996; Downes, 1993)

A continuous growth in the movement for the integration of technology into the daily practice of teaching may become a community expectation. Consequently, as teachers, we must be careful to be aware of these new expectations, because these ones may become as a requirements to approach quality of content in the classroom. Being in the vanguard and providing and integrating information technology into our daily practices of teaching could be now our new philosophy. We can be separated by the new innovations. We must embrace the self-efficacy theory that offers insights into the development of materials with more powerful instructional designs, and take advantage of it, to help our students and offer them a true interaction with technology.

Teaching Feedback from a Veteran Teacher: A response

Teaching Feedback from a Veteran Teacher

While reading this mini article from Melissa Kelly interviewing a veteran teacher, a lot of questions came to mind. Which level he was teaching? How many years of experience he had? What subject matter he was teaching?

His advice appears very simple. I am sure that there are a lot of things to consider before starting to lead a class successfully. I believe that teachers need to be consistent in their own rules and content. Also, I consider it very necessary and important to listen to others who have more experience in the area, and adopt the good ideas like, not yelling at the students but writing larger on the board to ensure that every body can get the instructions. In the future, I would take the same philosophy of not yelling but instead writing larger and I would adopt creative computer programs to promote a better classroom setting where the students feel more interested in the content and less distracted.

Another advice that I would keep in mind is about the short and simple surprise quizzes. I think this is a very sharp strategy in which the students can feel challenged and in future times more motivated to follow instructions and pay attention.

I still believing that this little interview could be more completed if our veteran teacher give us some tips dealing with behavior or school policies like when students come late and misbehave, and or how teachers must handle all the referrals.

After reading this section, I had to open other links that provided me more information about what to do in order to succeed in the class room. I think being consistent and knowing our students better and establish wide communication with parents would help enormously.

THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF LEARNING : My response

THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF LEARNING

Once again, we need to know how sensitive a human being is to keep learning, keep remembering and keep teaching. This is one of the most touching articles that I found in this series of reading. It reminds me that a human being is a complex and beautiful organism that has multiple biological systems that exchange information, and change and interact internally and externally with the environment and all the stimuli that can effect you emotionally.

While reading this article, which is based on various studies made by Noboru Kobayashi, M.D., I was awakened again to remember how much information or stimuli a child is perceiving before it is born. How developed and well prepared will this child become after being born? All this is a previous biological and physical interaction in which external emotions are already affecting the whole cognitive program of a child.

On the basis of these studies, as teachers we must be sensitive with our students, because probably a large majority of them come with traumatic cognitive function. As educators we do not know how the pregnancy history of our students was so we must provide a warm environment to promote a tender place to learn and a welcoming feeling to enrich the emotional human being.

I believe that if we promote an environment that helps students to feel valuable and comfortable, they will demonstrate and develop their cognitive powers in all capacities. We need to promote a better educational environment and feel totally compromised to adapt to the new social necessities like technology to prepare them for the future.

Technophobia response

Technophobia

Nancy Salvato started talking about the importance of being educated. She considers education as an important element in the continuous functionality in the democratic republic.

To ensure this functionality, members of the communities which make up our great nation need to have equal access to learning and be knowledgeable of the need of the society as a whole. That is why schools become very important in promoting stability and equilibrium in society. Schools then must insure to provide the same tools to everybody.

This is something that sounds easy, but it is not. There are many factors that can affect the integration of new ways to approach effective learning.

Computers have become part of the new technology of the 21^st century. All the advantages that an individual can get through the easy access to be informed will make a huge difference in the human perspective.

There could be many reason or excuses why some people reject to use the computer. But, by not taking the courage to incorporate this technological tool in their lives, and learn how to use it, makes the individual more isolated.

Why is important that teachers know to use the computer? In my opinion, teachers must know how to use the computer and other devices, in order to facilitate the enormous multitasks and responsibilities that a teacher must be dealing with every single day. Teachers can be better organized and create a better class setting by using the tools to deliver a motivated class.

By embracing new methods for teaching, we are transforming the nation by “not leaving any child behind” and vice versa. Educators must be familiar with all these new methods of teaching, not matter how intimidating it is to be in front of a computer. We need to learn how to take advantage of it, in order to prepare our students with enough skills to face the 21^st century’s necessities.