What Does Technology Integration Look Like?

Hello, everyone. Happy Tuesday to you all.

I'm still working out some ideas that are intriguing me right now that roughly fall into the teach-a-person-to-fish category.

As we replace the EZ Tech program, which did technology lessons for elementary students (independent of curriculum and context), with our own plan to help teachers integrate technology into the classroom, I am seeing a lot of parallels between how we are used to learning and how we teach our students.

For example, many of us learned by sitting in rows and having information presented to us. When it came time for us to apply what we learned, those of us who had really good memories or took very good notes were able to succeed and move on to the next topic. Or grade. Or degree.
Those of us who couldn't, often didn't.

Teachers usually succeeded in school and now hold one or several advanced degrees. We excelled at playing the school game, and many of us teach the way we were taught. But it is a different world, and many of us have even changed the way we learn without realizing it, or making the leap to change the way we teach.

Teachers in my training sessions, by overwhelming majority, learn a new skill better when they figure it out for themselves (with some "expert" guidance) than they do when someone learns it for them and demonstrates it. However, we're all in a perpetual time crunch, so we often ask someone to email us instructions for doing something we could learn on our own.

Let me ask you to think about this: of the last five things you figured out for yourself or learned by doing, how many can you still do well? Now, of the last five things that you needed to do for which someone sent you an email with instructions that you read, followed, and deleted, how many can you still do well? Or at all? Or do you email that same person again for the same instructions?

I know I'm guilty of taking the easy way out. How many times have I asked my colleague Glenn to show me the same thing on SMART Notebook or Moodle? So when a fellow teacher asks me to share instructions for something that he or she could easily find online, I am fully aware of the hypocrisy in the urge that creeps up for me to send a link to Let Me Google That For You (a great website that answers the person's question by showing him or her how you would have found the answer for yourself in a Google search).

As our teachers move from the old way of doing technology instruction (EZ Tech) and are thrust into the new way (hands-on, discovery learning, directly related to curricular goals), we will all be frustrated at times. It's difficult to do! There isn't a clear path we can all follow! Every student has different skills and needs! There are several different approaches a student could take to solve a problem or master a skill using technology.

To that end, let me share this link:

It is a technology integration matrix created by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology, and it gives examples for each level of technology integration and type of use with descriptions and videos.

I would love to create one of these with our own teachers' examples, but for now, as a resource (or idea-sparker) for teachers who are working without the EZ-Tech program for the first time, it's a good site to actually see what technology integration looks like in a variety of different circumstances.

They won't necessarily match your exact need... but the idea is there. Technology skills are built in real-time, in response to need, and when the learner sees the value in mastering a new skill and is ready to work.