After focusing on my website goal last week, this week I've turned my attention to my second goal, that of better incorporating technology tools into my curriculum. I have been going through my plans for the year and looking for learning goals, activities, and assessments that are a good (and natural) match for technology. I have found incorporating technology tools into my standing plans to be relatively easy, in theory at least. I have targeted several performance assessments throughout the year which I am in the process of modifying to include technology options, such as digital storytelling, podcasts, or wikis. In this sense, my GAME plan actions have been effective.
However, though coming up with exciting ideas and building these into my curriculum has been going fairly smoothly, I anticipate difficulties in implementation. Providing students with technology options for assessments does not have to mean investing huge amounts of class time to instructing students in the use of the technologies, assuming student already know how to use the tools and are able to trouble-shoot when problems arise. I am concerned, however, that to make technology an integral part of my curriculum and available to everyone, I will need to invest considerable class time in the direct instruction, modeling, and guided practice of technology tools. This is where ideas like natural fit and smooth integration start to loose their luster. So the question that has arisen for me this week is: Can I realistically and effectively integrate technology into my current curriculum without investing considerable amounts of additional class time (thus being forced to redesign my curriculum)?
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Response to Paul
ReplyDeleteI attended a conference on digital storytelling. While the project was more interested in students getting their life stories told, they have a neat collection of school-based ideas. I don't know if this will help or not, but here goes: http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/language_arts.html
Thanks for the link! I'm sure the more I know about the technology tools we use and the more confident I feel, the more effective I will be at engaging students in the use of these tools without too high of a time-investment. Still, I definitely imagine integrating tech tools to be a time commitment and that time will have to come from somewhere...
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