To help you get in the proper mindset for this project, think ahead to the near future when you call a meeting with your mentor teacher and field instructor to discuss what you hope to accomplish during your lead teaching time. Generically, you are interested in “integrating technology” into your teaching, but your mentor teacher and field instructor will press you to more clearly lay out what this looks like and why they should be convinced that this in the best interest of your students. You can probably imagine several questions that your mentor teacher and field instructor might bring with them to the meeting:
- What do you hope to accomplish technologically?
- Why do you feel strongly that this is in the best interest of students?
- What steps do you need to take to accomplish your goals?
- How are you going to assess whether you are succeeding?
- How are you going to document this process for future job interviews?
So, in your technology integration plan, you should answer:
(1) What technology/technologies you would choose to use? Why do you choose to use the technology/technologies?
(2) What specific content would you like to teach with the technology/technologies? What specific pedagogical goals would you like to achieve?
(3) What is your specific lesson or unit plan? (This may run the gamut from a time-intensive 2-week unit to something that may develop over the course of the year.)
Within this specific lesson or unit plan:
- you can plan on carrying out your plan in several steps so that students can gradually get immersed in intensive use of one or more technologies
- you can plan on using a certain technology in several different ways to achieve different pedagogical goals
- you can plan on weaving two or more technologies together to help achieve one or two specific pedagogical goals
- Of course, you can decide to include all of the three elements above in your plan.
Be sure to talk explicitly about how the technology/technologies are used in a way to help you to achieve your goals.
The plan should be a succinct 2-3 pages double-spaced. Be clear, but be precise. The due date is next Monday at noon.
We haven’t got a chance to talk about Wikis yet. But I would definitely encourage you to consider using Wikis in your tech plan as well. You can find some examples of using Wikis at Examples of educational wikis, and http://te958nclb.wikispaces.com/ (This is a wiki that I and some other graduate students designed for a classroom activity).
I am not expecting mediocre work!
Throw out ideas that someone else can easily think of!!
Come up with a plan that excites and inspires the rest of us!!!
I hope this would be a piece of work that you are truly proud of!!!!
