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This is a great article about the late famed educator, Marva Collins, who advocated for less technology and more focus on non-tech problem solving. While not an opponent of using technology, she largely based her outstanding success with children on the following precept: "Though children are exposed to technology (a biology software program is used with four- and five-year-olds, for instance), it is secondary to other lessons. 'I think what most of us fail to understand is there are steps in life,' Collins explains. 'We try to teach children that you cannot skip from step 1 to step 10.'"

"Closing the ELL/ESL Achievement Gap with Blended Learning," by Debbie Malone. Type of post: Strategies (in a sort of blog). This is an interesting article about helping ESOL/ELL students. Some important "take-aways," according to the author (regarding the blended learning approach she advocates): "However, one of the most valuable tools provided by online and blended learning programs is their continual checks for understanding, which provide educators with real-time actionable data. This helps teachers gauge whether their ELL/ESL students are keeping up with the rest of the class or whether they need more assistance. Educators can then spend more time working with individual students in areas where they are struggling and prevent problems from snowballing. "But technology can't solve all of the problems associated with the growing achievement gap between ELL/ESL students and native English speakers. Many educators have reported a lack of funding or personal development geared toward addressing the needs of ELL/ESL learners. Technology can, however, be leveraged to personalize the learning experience for these students. "Because the human element of the student-teacher relationship is still a vital classroom component, especially for ELL/ESL students, a blended learning classroom offers an ideal way to cultivate that relationship. Building on that, it may also be the answer to creating a more effective learning environment that lowers the language barrier for educators and increases academic achievement for ELL/ESL students." Great points! As the fictional movie character Borat used to say, "I like." However, I would like to see additional (and empirical) evidence. I do agree with the author on many points, though I would enjoy seeing a research study on this. Malone, D. (2014, November 12). Closing the ELL/ESL Achievement Gap with Blended Learning. Retrieved from https://blog.edgenuity.com/closing-the-ellesl-achievement-gap-through

Week 8: In our Data Action meeting we discussed intructional strategies involving simulation and games. This article explain some advantages and fears for educators implementing games into their lesson plans. Matthew Farber Social Studies Teacher, Ed Tech Leadership EdD Candidate, Author In the fall of 2014, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop (a nonprofit founded by Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney) assessed the impact of the gaming in school settings.

Initially, I was very hesitant to buy into learning through online games. I know that children today spend so much time in front of screens, and I didn't want to contribute to this obsession (for some children it does border on that). I did see that BrainPop, a site which I use frequently, introduced GameUp and Spotify. I figured if BrainPop was okay with gaming for learning, then I had to give it a try. Well, my students will now beg for BrainPop and will do evey activity, quiz and graphic organizer associated with a lesson in order to get to sortify. What a great tool. I am now a firm believer.

I too see the benefits of using these online games within instruction. The games provide students with a means of engagement that we often struggle to provide students. With the growth of technology, students are becoming more in-tune with new technology and are using it more often at home. By connecting technology to instruction, we are able to meet them in the middle. There are so many tools available online that it's a shame not to use them!

This article highlights the realization of Seymour Papert that electronic devices could increase education in isolated geographical regions facing poverty. Although we don't have school districts living in isolation in the United States, we do have poverty stricken districts with little to no technology available to the students. Seymour Papert had a vision "of a digitally enhanced learning experience [helping] close some of the gap that exists among urban and rural, well-resourced and poor schools."

This article describes the incorporation of web conferencing in a foreign language classroom with the purpose of improving listening and speaking skills. Although the number of students in the study is small, the authors provide very specific recommendations for the implementation of this technology in the classroom. This technology allows students more time to practice and interact with their L2 since the conferencing can be done outside of the classroom.

In this blog post by Veteran Teacher, Susie Reilly, we learn about an online program called Matific. Through this blog, it is clear that Matific has left a mark on the students in her classroom with closing learning gaps that were specifically addressed within the program.

As the school year kicks into gear, try these painless ways to incorporate technology into your teaching day.

Week 8:Theresa Horgan presents this journal about the use of graphic organizers in the classroom. She brings in the technological side of graphic organizers. She explains in her article how graphic organizers can be a useful teaching strategy. They are engaging and help students retain information from their learning. This is important because it helps students visualize and organize their thoughts from the lesson. Teachers can use graphic organizers in ALL subjects!

This is a resource for teachers who are not sure or need help organizing a proper rubric for assessing student work that is created with technology. I like how the site is organized; it is very user friendly. As noted by Edtechteacher.org, as time progresses, students will become more and more capable of using different technology platforms. Therefore, teacheres must be prepared to grade it.

"At the end of class, students write on note cards or slips of paper an important idea they learned, a question they have, a prediction about what will come next, or a thought about the lesson for the day. Alternatively, students could turn-in such a response at the start of the next day-either based on the learning from the day before or the previous night's homework. These quick writes can be used to assess students' knowledge or to make decisions about next teaching steps or points that need clarifying. This reflection helps students to focus as they enter the classroom or solidifies learning before they leave."

Dimension: Depth of Knowledge Rating: 3 - strategic reasoning SMART goal: Students will be able to solve an on grade level math task, that will require them to respond and defend their work to explain their reasoning 3 out of 5 times by the end of the 1st marking period. I believe that my team would be able to use this instructional tactic because we could use the exit card to see if students meet the SMART goal. I think that exit cards are a powerful tool for teachers to use because it shows instant data of student performance. It is a quick and informal way to see if students understand the concept or not. This video provides a unique way to students to use/take an exit card in the classroom. We could take ideas from this video and apply to it our own classroom.

I like the fact that students assess themselves (based on the learning target). They also give feedback to one another. In this model teachers can adjust instruction based on how students feel they reached learning targets. I am wondering, though, whether or not young students have enough self-realization to understand how they performed during a given lesson. If we're asking them to rate themselves, we have to hope that they understand how important this is, and what it really means. How does this video address dimensions in the 'Planning Protocol Rubric?' Since most of the dimensions were addressed (in other comments here), I'll comment on this video's ways of addressing 'Technology Integration.' No technology integration seen (though it's certainly possible that it may have occurred during the lesson and before this video was taken). Technology Integration level (based on the available video): 1. My SMART Learning Goal: "After three weeks of targeted instruction--and in concert with the content-area teacher--75% or more of our students will score at least one point higher on their ESOL RELA and ESOL math assessments. (The ESOL RELA [WIDA Access] pre-test was given approximately one month ago, while the baseline math pre-test was developed by our school's math department [and contains test stems from past PARCC exams].)" The 'exit ticket' approach can be used in any classroom, but with ESOL learners it might be more difficult to ascertain whether or not they have understood the question/s on the exit ticket sheet. And again, do they have the skills, understanding and self-realization necessary to rate themselves on how they do in a given classroom on a daily basis?

This blog post gives statistics that prove that students using mobile learning have increased test scores to about 20%. This blog post focuses on developing countries and it really opened my eyes to the countries outside of the United States. I always know how lucky we are with all the resources we have here, this blog post reminded the importance to all students around the world with how technology can really help them.

ICT for learning may be a trendy and popular topic as a blog on this site last week discussed, but the fact remains that children from poorer households are less likely to have access to ICT both in and out-of-school. As a result, they take longer to adapt to using the technology or hone their...

This article describes how teachers use different forms of technology in the classroom to foster students' learning in the area of mathematics. In order to be considered an effective teaching tool, the article explains that instructors need to think about cognitive and mathematical fidelity when determining what computer programs to use in the classroom.

This article discuss the vast availability of technology and how using apps in the classroom can help close student learning gaps.

This article includes a research study on digital divide and examine show technology is used in the classroom and home.

This article proves that teachers and students can benefit from the integration of technology in a foreign language classroom. As a world language teacher, I wanted to find an article that offers tools/ideas that could help me bridge the gap between the output and the input in world language class.

Motivation is a major issue in increasing participation as related to my group's exploratory question. This article discusses how integrating technology into the classroom can help improve student motivation and participation.

I agree that this is a great article for us to use when addressing our exploratory question. Motivation is certainly a key piece with students attempting their work. I do like the concept of "Presenting to a Larger Audience" as it inspires students to compete and to do well as there more eyes on their work. Integrating multimedia into the core curriculum would be beneficial as well, though would be difficult to implement in schools that have limited technological resources.