Teaching+with+Technology+-+Week+3


 * Teaching With Technology - Week 3 **

Greeting to all, I hope everyone is relieved that this week is done. I have completed this week’s assignment and I am ready to continue. This week, I have learned a lot of interesting information that is very useful for me as a teacher and overall for the benefit of my students. The main emphasis was my UDL lesson plan. I am really excited to have learned the wide variety of activities that I can use to better achieve my students academic success. I learned about the activities I may use to provide the necessary modification or accommodations for every student to learn. I found Chapter 6-Teaching Every Student very resourceful and eye opening in pointing out the never-ending ways that technology helps students become strong academic learners. I especially liked the story map that presented the three teaching models that emphasize the recognition, strategic, and affective networks. The recognition network provides students with multiple example, adequate background content, highlights critical features, and using multiple formats. The strategic network provides students with appropriate models, practice and support including scaffolds; provide ongoing feedback, and multiple tools for expression. The affective network provides students with adjustable levels of challenge, choice of rewards, choice of learning context, and offers choice of content and tools. These strategies will definitely meet the student’s academic needs as well as the instructional needs. I will be sure to incorporate as many of these as possible into my current classroom. They really helped me create my lesson plan.

This week, I also enjoyed reading and applying the information I learned from chapter 2 of Using Technology with classroom instruction that works. Pitler stress the fact that a student must be provided with feedback consistently throughout the learning process rather than just at the end of the lesson with assessment. Research suggests that feedback supports the following generalizations: 1. feedback should be corrective in nature; 2. feedback should be timely; 3. feedback should be specific to a criterion; and 4. students can effectively provide some of their own feedback. Therefore, it is suggested that feedback must be criterion-referenced, focused on specific types of knowledge, and be student led. Again, I mention that all this is very interesting information. I never knew the many different ways I can use technology all for the benefit of student academic success. I learned about the following programs that provide meaningful student feedback: Microsoft Word - Kincaid Readability Scale, eInstruction, and Vantage Learning. This chapter also provided web resources to enhance the learning process with focus on student achievement. These programs included Mathplayground, Cut the Knot, and BrainPop. Finally, it also mentioned communication software such as blogs, Wikis, instant messaging, and video conferencing. Despite all the work involved in the assignments for this week, I feel I have gained unlimited knowledge on important methods to incorporate technology in the classroom to create students that will be ready to face the challenges of the 21st century