In recent years of research on instructional technology has led to a clearer vision of how technology make a difference teaching and learning. Today, almost 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 most of those schools, teachers utilize the technology through integrated activities that are a part of their daily school curriculum. For instance, instructional technology creates an energetic environment by which students not just inquire, but also define problems of interest to them. This kind of activity would integrate the subjects of technology, social studies, math, science, and language arts with the opportunity to generate student-centered activity. Most educational technology experts agree, however, that technology ought to be integrated, much less a different subject or as a once-in-a-while project, but as something to market and extend student learning on a regular basis.
Today, classroom teachers may lack personal experience with technology and present yet another challenge. To be able to incorporate technology-based activities and projects into their curriculum, those teachers first must find enough time to learn to utilize 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 along with to help 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 knowledge of concepts and procedures when used appropriately.
Technology should play a vital role in academic content standards and their successful implementation. Expectations reflecting the correct usage of technology ought to be woven in to 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 use graphing calculators or computers to graph and analyze mathematical relationships. Write for Us Technology These expectations ought to be designed to support a curriculum rich in the utilization of technology as opposed to limit the utilization of technology to specific skills or grade levels. Technology makes subjects accessible to all students, including individuals with special needs. Options for assisting students to increase their strengths and progress in a standards-based curriculum are expanded through the utilization 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 must have on math and science teachers’ efforts to offer every student with “the opportunity and resources to develop the language skills they need to pursue life’s goals and to participate fully as informed, productive members of society,” cannot be overestimated.
Technology provides teachers with the instructional technology tools they need to operate more effectively and to become more attentive to the person needs of the students. Selecting appropriate technology tools give teachers a chance to build students’ conceptual knowledge and connect their learning to problem within the world. The technology tools such as Inspiration® technology, Starry Night, A WebQuest and Portaportal allow students to employ a number of strategies such as inquiry, problem-solving, creative thinking, visual imagery, critical thinking, and hands-on activity.
Great things about the utilization 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 utilization of meter sticks, hand lenses, temperature probes and computers becomes an easy section of what teachers and students are learning and doing. Contents teachers should use technology in methods enable students to conduct inquiries and take part 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 such classrooms are teacher centered due to the way they supplement teacher-controlled activities and because the application used to offer the drill and practice is teacher selected and teacher assigned. The relevancy of technology in the lives of young learners and the ability of technology to improve teachers’ efficiency are helping to raise students’ achievement in new and exciting ways.
As students undertake grade levels, they can take part in increasingly sophisticated hands-on, inquiry-based, personally relevant activities where they investigate, research, measure, compile and analyze information to attain conclusions, solve problems, make predictions and/or seek alternatives. They could explain how science often advances with the introduction of new technologies and how solving technological problems often results in new scientific knowledge. They ought to describe how new technologies often extend the existing levels of scientific understanding and introduce new regions of research. They ought to explain why basic concepts and principles of science and technology ought to be a part of active debate about 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 an energetic, 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 ought to be placed on how best to think through problems and projects, not only things to think.
Technological tools and resources may range from hand lenses and pendulums, to electronic balances and up-to-date online computers (with software), to methods and processes for planning and doing 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 understanding of science and technology.
Most students in the schools, at all age levels, might possess some expertise in the utilization of technology, however K-12 they need to understand that science and technology are interconnected and that using technology involves assessment of the benefits, risks and costs. Students should build scientific and technological knowledge, along with the skill required to design and construct devices. Furthermore, they need to develop the processes to solve problems and recognize that problems might 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 calculators and computers, help students learn mathematics and support effective mathematics teaching. Rather than replacing the training 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 tools are types of the wide selection of technologies, or tools, used to show, learn, and do mathematics. These tools complement, as opposed to replace, more traditional ways to do mathematics, such as using symbols and hand-drawn diagrams.
Technology, used appropriately, helps students learn mathematics. Electronic tools, such as spreadsheets and dynamic geometry software, extend the range of problems and develop knowledge of key mathematical relationships. A powerful foundation in number and operation concepts and skills must use calculators effectively as something for solving problems involving computations. Appropriate uses of those and other technologies in the mathematics classroom enhance learning, support effective instruction, and impact the levels 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 couple of data, determine appropriate ways to display and interpret the information, and test conjectures about the impact of changes in the data.