Technology Integration Goals for Every School
Technology integration is a goal creeping - or perhaps sweeping - through the education system today. What form it ultimately takes will vary with school and teacher, but there should be certain elements that stand as clear goals. Following are my thoughts as to what those should be. I do not here discuss specific tools that a teacher might use in their teaching.
Course Websites
Every teacher/course should have a course website. This can be via an LMS such as Moodle - which I like for its functionality and the fact that it is open source and free - or via a wiki - I like wikispaces.
A course website allows a teacher to include all manner of resources freely available on the Internet. In the case of a wiki, it also allows students to easily contribute to the course materials. This also means that when necessary, another teacher can easily step in because all of the materials are organized and available. Lastly, good course websites require and help build an underlying curriculum, essential to quality education.
Crowd-sourced Content
Crowdsourcing refers to having a large group of participants all contribute to the creation of one document focused on one subject. This is a powerful method of creating course content or content for any purpose. Collective wisdom adds the value, and the number of participants reduces the workload.
One (the same) Learning Content Management System (LCMS)
The choice of an appropriate learning content management system (LCMS) is important for a school. Consistent use by teachers of the same LCMS brings a number of important advantages. Both teachers and students only have one system to deal with, and teachers can all learn the use of the system and share materials more easily if everything is in the same system.
Student ePortfolios
As students work their way through school, they will have artifacts of their learning - papers, projects, experiments, lab reports, artwork - that they can preserve in their own portfolio. These artifacts testify to their understanding and their progress, and can be easily shared with others.
Exemplars
Just as students should save their best work, teachers should also save the best student work to use as exemplars, showing other students what excellent work looks like. This helps to raise the quality of work done year after year. This can be part of the course website.
Peer Review/Collaboration
Technology allows for easier collaboration, both among students in the same class, students in another class, and students in another school, another state, or another country. Such collaboration gives students the opportunity to learn from a wide range of others, and to work with people they otherwise would not be able to. It broadens their perspective, and at the same time gives them the opportunity to share their knowledge with others, in and of itself a valuable learning experience.
Collaboration is also a way of inviting peer review, students helping other students with their work before turning the final product into the teacher.
Learning Journals
Students should keep learning journals, tracking their thoughts and progress in each class. This is a reflective practice that can help learning along, and they can be used in a number of ways by teachers. Improving student writing and assessing understanding are just two ways they can benefit students.
Developers Notebooks
In the same way, teachers should be encouraged to keep developers notebooks, keeping track of their thinking about courses and their teaching.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking - using a tool such as Diigo.com or Delicious.com - is a way for teachers to share useful resources they discover online with other teachers. By using the same set of keywords, everyone in a department, and even in the school, can benefit from everyone else's discoveries. Social bookmarking allows a school to build up a corpus of useful online resources. In certain courses, it may make sense for students to use social bookmarking as well.
Professional Learning Networks (PLN)
In order to continue growing and learning as teachers, every teacher should have their own professional learning network (PLN). A PLN consists of blogs that you follow, Twitter conversations you participate in, groups of like-minded teachers you exchange ideas with, professional organizations, and any other method a teacher can use to keep up on everything going on in her field.
Open Access Wifi
Encourage use throughout the school by providing wifi access everywhere. Rather than blocking sites, focus on student behavior by teaching them responsible use. (Don't penalize everyone for the behavior of a few.) Blocking access is simply denying them additional opportunities for learning. Understand what students do online, then use that as part of the teaching and learning process.
In addition to these general aspects of technology integration that schools should gradually work towards, meaningful technology integration means that every teacher of every subject endeavors to make technology a seamless part of the teaching and learning that goes on.
Course Websites
Every teacher/course should have a course website. This can be via an LMS such as Moodle - which I like for its functionality and the fact that it is open source and free - or via a wiki - I like wikispaces.
A course website allows a teacher to include all manner of resources freely available on the Internet. In the case of a wiki, it also allows students to easily contribute to the course materials. This also means that when necessary, another teacher can easily step in because all of the materials are organized and available. Lastly, good course websites require and help build an underlying curriculum, essential to quality education.
Crowd-sourced Content
Crowdsourcing refers to having a large group of participants all contribute to the creation of one document focused on one subject. This is a powerful method of creating course content or content for any purpose. Collective wisdom adds the value, and the number of participants reduces the workload.
One (the same) Learning Content Management System (LCMS)
The choice of an appropriate learning content management system (LCMS) is important for a school. Consistent use by teachers of the same LCMS brings a number of important advantages. Both teachers and students only have one system to deal with, and teachers can all learn the use of the system and share materials more easily if everything is in the same system.
Student ePortfolios
As students work their way through school, they will have artifacts of their learning - papers, projects, experiments, lab reports, artwork - that they can preserve in their own portfolio. These artifacts testify to their understanding and their progress, and can be easily shared with others.
Exemplars
Just as students should save their best work, teachers should also save the best student work to use as exemplars, showing other students what excellent work looks like. This helps to raise the quality of work done year after year. This can be part of the course website.
Peer Review/Collaboration
Technology allows for easier collaboration, both among students in the same class, students in another class, and students in another school, another state, or another country. Such collaboration gives students the opportunity to learn from a wide range of others, and to work with people they otherwise would not be able to. It broadens their perspective, and at the same time gives them the opportunity to share their knowledge with others, in and of itself a valuable learning experience.
Collaboration is also a way of inviting peer review, students helping other students with their work before turning the final product into the teacher.
Learning Journals
Students should keep learning journals, tracking their thoughts and progress in each class. This is a reflective practice that can help learning along, and they can be used in a number of ways by teachers. Improving student writing and assessing understanding are just two ways they can benefit students.
Developers Notebooks
In the same way, teachers should be encouraged to keep developers notebooks, keeping track of their thinking about courses and their teaching.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking - using a tool such as Diigo.com or Delicious.com - is a way for teachers to share useful resources they discover online with other teachers. By using the same set of keywords, everyone in a department, and even in the school, can benefit from everyone else's discoveries. Social bookmarking allows a school to build up a corpus of useful online resources. In certain courses, it may make sense for students to use social bookmarking as well.
Professional Learning Networks (PLN)
In order to continue growing and learning as teachers, every teacher should have their own professional learning network (PLN). A PLN consists of blogs that you follow, Twitter conversations you participate in, groups of like-minded teachers you exchange ideas with, professional organizations, and any other method a teacher can use to keep up on everything going on in her field.
Open Access Wifi
Encourage use throughout the school by providing wifi access everywhere. Rather than blocking sites, focus on student behavior by teaching them responsible use. (Don't penalize everyone for the behavior of a few.) Blocking access is simply denying them additional opportunities for learning. Understand what students do online, then use that as part of the teaching and learning process.
In addition to these general aspects of technology integration that schools should gradually work towards, meaningful technology integration means that every teacher of every subject endeavors to make technology a seamless part of the teaching and learning that goes on.