PARENTS: Washington Middle School needs YOUR help! Our committee has decided to use blogs to get you and our community involved in the integration of technology into our classrooms. Our main goal is to fundraise through our blogs, but we are also showing you that technology is important in the learning processes of our students.
Technology is an important part of learning and is becoming ever more important as technology advances every day. We know of your concerns with technology (playing video games, messing around on the Internet, etc.), but we believe that with technology we can set guidelines and procedures to make sure that the technology we use will ONLY be used for educational purposes.
There are two different learning theories that a teacher could use, Directed and Constructivist. As M.D. Roblyer and Aaron H. Doering stated in their book “Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching”, “Directed models stress individual work using traditional teaching and learning methods because they are designed to address problems of accountability and quality assurance in our educational system”, while Constructivist models, “stress cooperative work and nontraditional exploration methods because they are designed to help students think on their own, work with diverse groups, and see the relevance of skills to their daily lives” (pg. 43, Roblyer and Doering).
Example of a Direct learning theory and Constructivist learning theory.
Our wish is to have two different types of technology in our classroom, one being computers with Internet connection and Webcams. We could do so many activities with the Internet and we would be able to communicate with other schools, not only in the United States, but the entire world! We could have it as a Social Studies or Science project and be able to see the entire world (maybe via Skype, or pen pal, etc.).
We would also like to have calculators and math systems to help our students improve their math scores. By having hands-on, game-like pieces of technology, students are more apt to learn. So, instead of using a traditional book, teach, write down math problems type of lesson, hands on materials and math systems could be an alternative.
The examples of lessons above could be taught with either the Directed or Constructivist learning theory. To give you more of a sense of how the theories are here’s a few examples:
Constructivist Theory – Using Internet technology in the classroom and having webcams would be good for group and cooperative work because you can assign specific jobs for specific students. Being able to work with one another and research or email people across the globe is an important part of learning because we have to work with people our entire lives.
Directed Theory – Using a math system or game-like activity can be taught using Directed learning theory by having the students answer traditional questions from the activities that they do.
We hope that you can help our school and our classroom and encourage you to discuss and communicate with myself and our committee. Technology is an important part of learning and it isn’t going away. We all understand the importance of the common standards of learning that were set a long time ago, and we won’t go away from them, but we do need to realize that the future is here! Thank you!
Mr. Washington
References
Roblyer, M.D., & Doering, A.H. (2010). Integrating educational technology into teaching. (5th ed.). Boston: Allen and Bacon/Pearson.
Murphy, Elizabeth (2007). Constructivist Learning Theory. Retrieved June 5, 2010 from http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emurphy/stemnet/cle2b.html.
Edutech Wiki (2006). Objectivism. Retrieved June 5, 2010 from http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Objectivism
DISCLAIMER: This blog is an assignment for an educational technology course at National University. It is not a real fundraising blog.
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