What Is Successful Technology Integration?

Getting used to current technology will allow you to easily adjust to all the emerging technologies that will infiltrate our day-to-day lives in the coming decades. The growing edtech industry creates adaptive interfaces, classroom engagement boosters, education-specific fundraising sites, and more. Teachers spend countless hours attempting to assess the skills or areas of improvement of their students. There are currently myriad tools, data platforms and apps that constantly assess student’s skills and needs, and they relay the data to the teacher. In a traditional classroom, students who were struggling to learn new concepts would quickly fall behind their peers. With self-paced learning components, however, students can advance at their own pace as part of the learning process.

• Because expectations for device use will likely differ depending on the type of activity, you may want to create a matrix of activities and expectations.
• In the case of devices, these routines should cover everything, beginning the moment students take the devices out.
• We also have quick activities, digital dilemmas, and videos that address these skills.
• Moreover, digital materials can enhance the learning experience by making it more flexible, more engaging and better able to accommodate student needs.

Especially when searching for jobs in technological fields, it’s important to conduct your own research. You may want to look into various companies’ expectations for their employees’ entry-level skills or what a typical position may expect of you so you can go about learning and honing the relevant skills. You may want to ask a potential employer about these things during an interview as well. Whether students are working independently or collaboratively, technology engages students because it is interactive. However, the way technology is implemented and used in classrooms of various grade levels and content areas will differ.

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The templates available helped students to get started and then focus on the content and how they could bring their stories to life. In all prior years of teaching the same content, I had not seen students enjoy an activity as much nor retain the content, especially learning how to tell stories using the different past tenses as they did. It was a risk worth taking and one that was a different way to engage students, especially with the use of an emerging technology. A social studies class could investigate the psychosocial dimension through the longer histories of informational technologies (e.g., the printing press, telegraph, internet, and now AI) to consider how they shifted people’s lives. They could also explore political questions about what rules or regulations governments should impose on informational systems that include people’s data and intellectual property. A science/STEM classroom might focus on the technical dimension by investigating how generative AI works and demystifying its ostensibly “intelligent” capabilities.

Plus a huge number of media-creation apps that produce everything from documents to polished videos. And in fact, a significant number of students already use their smartphones to do their homework. Due to their versatility, there is a global shift towards IWBs that is picking up momentum, especially interactive touch screen displays. The technology blends the best of multimedia and touch technologies with the familiar functions of a regular whiteboard. Therefore a teacher can show a video or search the Internet live, annotate the content, and then even share with students via their devices. And instruction can be provided by any number of subject matter experts in the real world—in addition to the person teaching the course through the use of technology.

Demonstrate a willingness to learn.

“At the beginning of the year, my students thought that fast reading was fluent reading,” Delzer says, but after reading aloud and hearing their friends’ renditions, they understand the importance of pacing and emotion. Kids can then re-record their favorite books and compare their own recordings to see how their performances evolve after practice. Blome, Increasing graduation ceremony in Baku Learning With Technology, Walden University, on the internet at /connect/newsroom/spotlight/2017/increasing-learning-with-technology. Technology has transformed life as we know it, and the classroom looks much different than it did 50—or even 10—years ago. Traditional chalkboards have been replaced with digital whiteboards, and classrooms have a surplus of iPads.

Edtech, or education technology, is the practice of introducing information and communication technology tools into the classroom to create more engaging, inclusive and individualized learning experiences. Make sure you establish an accessible channel where you communicate information and updates to families regularly, including your syllabus and your approach to using technology. It’s also an opportunity to empower caregivers to be involved in kids’ use of technology and reinforce the positive practices that are part of your classroom. Digital citizenship means using technology to learn, create, and participate, and to think critically about the digital world. By teaching students these skills, you’re preparing them to take advantage of the opportunities that technology offers — both in and out of the classroom — and to navigate the risks and potential pitfalls that come along with it.

How to Use Technology to Support ELLs in Your Classroom

Here are some things to consider about your classroom when deciding on the best tech solution. It’s possible that a more expensive solution could save your school time, money, and frustration over the long run. Consider the following in addition to the listed price of your chosen solution – either hardware or software. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is how much a device, software, etc. costs over its entire lifetime.

I decided to focus on podcasting for about four weeks so that students could really learn about the value of podcasts and how to use them for their own learning as well as for building speaking skills and confidence. For our class, students would have time to explore podcasts before diving into creating their own. The learning activity required them to create a name, logo, intro, and topic first. Then, they had to record an intro and have some of their classmates provide feedback. The next step was to practice their interviewing skills by having a few classmates as guests.

Refocusing on Instructional Strategies

The potential for scalable individualized learning has played an important role in the edtech industry’s ascendance. The way we learn, how we interact with classmates and teachers, and our overall enthusiasm for the same subjects is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Once widely dismissed as distractions, devices like cell phones, mp3 players, and tablet computers are now being used as learning tools in forward-thinking schools. Read a blog by Ben Johnson on using iPads in the classroom or an article about using cell phones for educational purposes. Check out the case study by former Edutopia executive director Milton Chen on using iPods to teach English language learners, or there’s a blog by Audrey Watter about texting in the classroom. We also have a blog series that maps k-5 iPad apps to Bloom’s taxonomy by Diane Darrow.

But using augmented reality to animate math challenges is a whole different ball game. Continue to the next section of the guide, How to Integrate Technology Tools, where you will find many more tips for successful technology integration. This type of guide helps teachers choose appropriate technology to go along with a particular instructional strategy.

Creating the Playbook

Before we can discuss how to shift our pedagogy or the role of the teacher in a classroom that is integrating technology, it is important to first define what “technology integration” actually means. Seamless integration is when students are not only using technology daily, but have access to a variety of tools that match the task at hand and provide them the opportunity to build a deeper understanding of content. But how we define technology integration can also depend on the kinds of technology available, how much access one has to technology, and who is using the technology. For instance, in a classroom with only an interactive whiteboard and one computer, learning is likely to remain teacher-centric, and integration will revolve around teacher needs, not necessarily student needs. Still, there are ways to implement even an interactive whiteboard to make it a tool for your students. With the rise of digital technology and an increased need for technologically-proficient people in almost any field, learning technology skills is very important.

Kahoot is accessible to play on phones or computers and teachers can determine if they want students to work independently or be assigned to teams. We aimed to ensure that technology integration was intentional and meaningful, enhancing rather than overshadowing the instructional strategies. As an education consultant, Jamie created curriculum and professional development content for teachers. Prior to consulting, Jamie was senior manager of  educator professional learning programs at Common Sense and taught middle school English in Oakland, California. For the 2016–2017 school year, Jamie received an Excellence in Teaching award and was one of three finalists for Teacher of the Year in Oakland Unified School District.

Harnessing Technology for Engaging Learning Experiences

Posting homework assignments online (via learning platforms like Blackboard, Brightspace, and Moodle) is one way many teachers can begin to integrate technology in the classroom. Assignments are easily accessible, which can increase student engagement and help students become more organized. Integration of technology in education simply refers to the use of technology to enhance the student learning experience. Utilizing different types of technology in the classroom, including a virtual classroom, creates learners who are actively engaged with learning objectives. The implementation of technology also creates pathways for differentiated instruction to meet the unique needs of students as individual learners within a broader classroom climate.