In the past few years of research on instructional technology has triggered a clearer vision of how technology can impact teaching and learning. Today, nearly every school in the United States of America uses technology as a part of teaching and learning and with each state having its own customized technology program. In many of the schools, teachers use the technology through integrated activities that are a part of their daily school curriculum. For instance, instructional technology creates a dynamic environment in which students not merely inquire, but additionally define problems of interest to them. This activity would integrate the subjects of technology, social studies, math, science, and language arts with the ability to produce student-centered activity. Most educational technology experts agree, however, that technology must certanly be integrated, never as another subject or as a once-in-a-while project, but as an instrument to promote and extend student learning on an everyday basis.
Today, classroom teachers may lack personal experience with technology and present an additional challenge. To be able to incorporate technology-based activities and projects within their curriculum, those teachers first must find enough time to learn to use the tools and understand the terminology essential for participation in projects or activities. They must have the capacity to employ technology to improve student learning in addition to to help expand personal professional development.
Instructional technology empowers students by improving skills and concepts through multiple representations and enhanced visualization. Its benefits include increased accuracy and speed in data collection and graphing, real-time visualization, the capacity to collect and analyze large volumes of data and collaboration of data collection and interpretation, and more varied presentation of results. Technology also engages students in higher-order thinking, builds strong problem-solving skills, and develops deep understanding of concepts and procedures when used appropriately.
Technology should play a crucial role in academic content standards and their successful implementation. Expectations reflecting the right utilization of technology must certanly be woven into the standards, benchmarks and grade-level indicators. For instance, the standards should include expectations for students to compute fluently using paper and pencil, technology-supported and mental methods and to utilize graphing calculators or computers to graph and analyze mathematical relationships. Write for Us Technology These expectations must certanly be intended to support a curriculum abundant with the use of technology as opposed to limit the use of technology to specific skills or grade levels. Technology makes subjects accessible to any or all students, including those with special needs. Alternatives for assisting students to maximise their strengths and progress in a standards-based curriculum are expanded through the use of technology-based support and interventions. For instance, specialized technologies enhance opportunities for students with physical challenges to develop and demonstrate mathematics concepts and skills. Technology influences exactly how we work, exactly how we play and exactly how we live our lives. The influence technology in the classroom needs to have on math and science teachers’ efforts to supply every student with “the ability and resources to develop the language skills they need to pursue life’s goals and to participate fully as informed, productive members of society,” can not be overestimated.
Technology provides teachers with the instructional technology tools they need to operate more effectively and to be much more responsive to the average person needs of these students. Selecting appropriate technology tools give teachers an opportunity to build students’ conceptual knowledge and connect their understanding how to problem within the world. The technology tools such as for instance Inspiration® technology, Starry Night, A WebQuest and Portaportal allow students to employ a number of strategies such as for instance inquiry, problem-solving, creative thinking, visual imagery, critical thinking, and hands-on activity.
Benefits of the use of these technology tools include increased accuracy and speed in data collection and graphing, real-time visualization, interactive modeling of invisible science processes and structures, the capacity to collect and analyze large volumes of data, collaboration for data collection and interpretation, and more varied presentations of results.
Technology integration strategies for content instructions. Beginning in kindergarten and extending through grade 12, various technologies could be made a part of everyday teaching and learning, where, for instance, the use of meter sticks, hand lenses, temperature probes and computers becomes a seamless part of what teachers and students are learning and doing. Contents teachers should use technology in techniques enable students to conduct inquiries and participate in collaborative activities. In traditional or teacher-centered approaches, computer technology is employed more for drill, practice and mastery of basic skills.
The instructional strategies employed in such classrooms are teacher centered due to the way they supplement teacher-controlled activities and because the application used to supply the drill and practice is teacher selected and teacher assigned. The relevancy of technology in the lives of young learners and the capability of technology to enhance teachers’ efficiency are helping to raise students’ achievement in new and exciting ways.
As students move through grade levels, they can participate in increasingly sophisticated hands-on, inquiry-based, personally relevant activities where they investigate, research, measure, compile and analyze information to reach conclusions, solve problems, make predictions and/or seek alternatives. They are able to explain how science often advances with the introduction of new technologies and how solving technological problems often results in new scientific knowledge. They need to describe how new technologies often extend the current quantities of scientific understanding and introduce new regions of research. They need to explain why basic concepts and principles of science and technology must certanly be a part of active debate concerning the economics, policies, politics and ethics of various science-related and technology-related challenges.
Students need grade-level appropriate classroom experiences, enabling them to learn and to manage to do science in a dynamic, inquiry-based fashion where technological tools, resources, methods and processes are plentiful and extensively used. As students integrate technology into researching and doing science, emphasis must certanly be placed on the best way to think through problems and projects, not only what to think.
Technological tools and resources may vary from hand lenses and pendulums, to electronic balances and up-to-date online computers (with software), to methods and processes for planning and performing a project. Students can learn by observing, designing, communicating, calculating, researching, building, testing, assessing risks and benefits, and modifying structures, devices and processes – while applying their developing familiarity with science and technology.
Most students in the schools, at all age levels, might have some expertise in the use of technology, however K-12 they ought to understand that science and technology are interconnected and that using technology involves assessment of the advantages, risks and costs. Students should build scientific and technological knowledge, in addition to the skill required to style and construct devices. Additionally, they ought to develop the processes to fix problems and understand that problems may be solved in a number of ways.
Rapid developments in the style and uses of technology, particularly in electronic tools, will change how students learn. For instance, graphing calculators and computer-based tools provide powerful mechanisms for communicating, applying, and learning mathematics in the workplace, in everyday tasks, and in school mathematics. Technology, such as for instance calculators and computers, help students learn mathematics and support effective mathematics teaching. Rather than replacing the learning of basic concepts and skills, technology can connect skills and procedures to deeper mathematical understanding. For instance, geometry software allows experimentation with families of geometric objects, and graphing utilities facilitate researching the characteristics of classes of functions.
Learning and applying mathematics requires students to become adept in using a number of techniques and tools for computing, measuring, analyzing data and solving problems. Computers, calculators, physical models, and measuring devices are samples of the wide variety of technologies, or tools, used to instruct, learn, and do mathematics. These tools complement, as opposed to replace, more traditional ways of doing mathematics, such as for instance using symbols and hand-drawn diagrams.
Technology, used appropriately, helps students learn mathematics. Electronic tools, such as for instance spreadsheets and dynamic geometry software, extend the product range of problems and develop understanding of key mathematical relationships. A solid foundation in number and operation concepts and skills is required to use calculators effectively as an instrument for solving problems involving computations. Appropriate uses of the and other technologies in the mathematics classroom enhance learning, support effective instruction, and impact the quantities of emphasis and ways certain mathematics concepts and skills are learned. For instance, graphing calculators allow students to quickly and easily produce multiple graphs for a set of data, determine appropriate ways to produce and interpret the info, and test conjectures concerning the impact of changes in the data.