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Integrating Technology in the Classroom: It Takes More Than Just Having Computers

Access an online weather forecast. Most elementary grade teachers begin each school day with a discussion of the date and local weather. Why not take an extra minute to visit a site such as UM Weather, The Weather Channel, or USA Today Weather, to find out what the rest of the day might bring? If you have a few extra minutes, check out weather in other parts of the country as well.   Include URLs in your monthly calendar. Each month, Education World provides a printable and editable coloring calendar for classroom use. Before distributing copies of the calendar to your students, add the URLs of a few sites that will add to their understanding of the months events -- and encourage them to visit those sites. The September calendar, for example, might offer links to sites about Labor Day, Grandparents' Day, and Hispanic Heritage Month. (A kid-friendly search engine such as Yahoo Kids will help you locate appropriate sites.) Or, students can find the sites themselves as they complete a Months of the Year Project.   Access online weather forecasts in French, German, or Spanish. Begin foreign language classes with a discussion of the day's weather. The Weather Channel provides weather information for Brazil, Germany, France, and Latin America in the native language of each country.   Challenge students with online mathematics problems. Add a daily or weekly mathematics challenge to your seatwork assignments, math lessons, or extra credit activities. The Math Forums Math Problem of the Week offers word problems in five categories -- math fundamentals, pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, and pre-calculus. The AIMS Puzzle Corner provides more than 100 math-related puzzles appropriate for students in upper elementary grades and middle school. Most include printable worksheets. Aunty Math's Math Challenges for K-5 Learners offers biweekly word problems for younger students, while high school students will enjoy the news-related math problems at Math Counts. Dont like todays problem? Not to worry! Most of the sites listed also include extensive archives. If you teach grades 3-8, extend your students online math experience and encourage them to match wits with students around the world by participating in the Abacus International Math Challenge.

Provide a URL in place of a quote. Do you write a quote on the chalkboard each day, for students to reflect on and discuss? Instead of writing out the quote, provide students with the URL and have them locate the days quote themselves. Quote of the Day, Quotes of the Day, and Quote A Day are all excellent sources of funny, inspirational, or thought-provoking quotes.   Introduce a word of the day. Extend students vocabulary by including an online word of the day in opening activities, seatwork assignments, or language arts lessons. The Daily Buzzword at Word Central provides a word of the day and related activity appropriate for upper elementary students. Vocabulary Builder offers words and definitions for students in grades 4-6 and grades 6-9. The

Get rid of the overhead projector and start using presentation

"Microsoft Power Point"

"Corel Presentation

Perhaps, the iPad will be the tool that really does transform classroom practice.

use Facebook or Twitter to post a topic for discussion and get all students involved and interacting with one another

Having students post their work in blogs is a great way to allow student to showcase all their hard work or works-in-progress. Students can help each other out by posting comments and suggestions for each other.

You can easily create and post podcasts for students who want to review or were absent so every student has the opportunity to soak it all in.

peak with virtual guest lecturers, and make friends and interact with others in different countries.

A great way to optimize collaboration is to use mobile devices in the classroom by letting students use them in group work.

more likely to be engaged in learning.

need to press buttons

manipulate the tools they have to achieve a goal

think out problems

improve focus among students

independently

accelerate struggling students close the learning gap between those at the back of the class and the A-students

gives teachers more options

In technology-infused discovery activities, Internet research, virtual manipulatives, and multimedia resources allow students to explore unanswered questions.

Ideally, to maximize these opportunities, every student needs direct access to technology on a daily basis

The projects created are excellent tools for formative and summative assessment. Yet more than that, through creation activities, students design products that make them active partners in constructing learning experiences in the classroom and beyond. In demonstrating their skills and knowledge, they become more confident in their own abilities and their own voices.

Shift in Roles

In this configuration, the teacher acts as a learning catalyst, orchestrating and facilitating activities that spark defining moments for students. The most effective activities take two forms— discovery and creation—though they often symbiotically work together. The student then becomes the focal point of the classroom, acting as explorer (e.g., mathematician, scientist, sociologist) and designer (e.g., author, artist, composer).

facilitating

Quick, easy Polling Applications

are two of many applications that make it quick and easy to create simple polls that can let you gather feedback from students – determine if they are struggling with a topic, if they know the correct answers to questions you ask, and so on. They can often participate in these polls using a smartphone.

You can also gather feedback by creating a “back channel” using Twitter.

2. Gamify It

Leveraging gaming mechanics can make learning more fun is probably easier than you think. For example, any time you bring competition or levels of achievement to a classroom exercise, you’re gamifying your classroom.

Here’s a variety of resources and ideas for using gaming in the classroom:

3. Let Students Create

4. Get Interactive

Here’s a few tools and ideas to consider.

Online Interactive White Boards

Bounceapp

Interactive apps that work with Smartphones

5. Have Students Collaborate

Here are a number of tools and techniques for classroom collaborations.

6. Project Based Learning

7. Simulations

Economics

Marketing

Medical:

Business

8. Bring in a Guest or Two

With the power of video conferencing apps like Skype, Google Hangout, Facetime, and others, our ability to connect with people all across the world has never been better or less costly. Teachers have been using Skype and similar tools to being guest lecturers, experts, students, and others into the classroom for years

videos and more

For the Love of Technology Lesson These videos are suitable for most grade levels and are designed to spark curiosity and discussion.

Students can work together to create artwork. These activities were designed with younger children in mind, but could be adapted for older students.

Students can learn more about each other with this lesson by using Venn diagrams to describe the ways in which they are similar and different.

This is an activity designed to encourage students to think about the importance of working together. This lesson requires the poem Nine Gold Medals by David Roth from Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul. This activity can be used before starting a group project. NOTE: The site includes ad

Read articles that define and explain how to use cooperative learning strategies in the classroom. Includes cooperative learning lesson plans for a variety of subjects and grade levels.