Exploring Technology Integration

September 15, 2007

There are countless cases where the integration of technology has improved student performance, especially in schools with less privileged student populations. The one that stands out to me the most is the case of Union City, New Jersey. This school district avoided being “taken over by the state” for not meeting state standards by completely changing the learning dynamic in their classroom. I currently work in a school where the majority of students come from homes in which they are not only well cared for, but well off. It seems that in my school the push is to incorporate technology to better meet the needs of the higher achieving, gifted students. There is nothing wrong with that, I agree that it is important to nurture the gifts of these young learners. But it was not so long ago that I was working in a Title 1 school in south Florida, where it was common place for my students to live in a home without a phone. Computers in the home were unheard of for most of these children. These were children with no adult supervision, living in neighborhoods wrought with drugs and poverty. Their attendance at school was sporadic at best, and when they were there, they were often too tired or ill-behaved to engage in learning. That is how I imagine Union City. Here is a school system which was failing its learners – miserably! With the integration of technology, “Test scores have shot up to the point where they're the highest among New Jersey cities. Eighty percent of the district's students currently meet state standards, up from 30 percent. Attendance at the 11-school, 11,600-student district increased, dropout and absence rates decreased, and students have been clamoring to transfer into Union City schools.” When you are able to hook learners of all walks of life with technology, classroom management issues disappear and students are excited about coming to school! At that point anything is possible!

I am lucky enough to work in a school district in which all instruction is driven by the standards, and at a school where UBD is a way of life. Whether technology is incorporated into a lesson or not the standards are always a driving force in the instruction. In my opinion, the challenge comes in convincing teachers that it is more important to do a thorough job with the most important, worthwhile standards, and not just a cursory coverage of every single standard.

I hope to continue to include technology in my classroom, but to vary the ways I which I do so. With the arrival of a Smart Board, and student response system, I am looking forward to adding technology not just to every unit, but to nearly every lesson. In the past, including technology in my instruction meant fighting for time in the computer lab, begging for an LCD projector, winning over the media specialist. In the very near future, I will have a plethora of technology options at my fingertips, in my own classroom. The sky is the limit it seems.

Never having been a proponent of standardized testing, I was intrigued to learn that although students who were engaged in project-based learning did not score better than those students receiving traditional instruction – however, they showed far greater retention of the material that they learned through project based instruction. Since I teach a class in which I was lucky enough to help write the curriculum, and in which the curriculum is ever changing and growing, I see enormous potential in the areas of problem based learning. Hands on lessons where the students are self directed and motivated and I am there as more of a facilitator, mentor and guide. Of the five classes I teach a day, I have two co-taught (special education inclusion) classes, two gifted classes and on on-level class. So differentiation is the name of the game. The learning styles within each class vary greatly, and the differences in learning styles from class to class are often polar opposites. Technology is the perfect tool to help meet the needs of all these truly different learners.