Chapter 4 Journal

How can teachers integrate technology into their work as educators? Teachers can integrate technology into their work as educators in many ways. First, teachers can integrate technology into their work as educators to present academic material and create interactive learning experiences. After doing my first 5 hours of observations, I noticed the teacher used many different ways of integrating technology into the classroom all day. For example, she used a smart board for her students to do demonstrate their answers on the board and also offered the students computer time during centers at the end of the day. I feel this teacher really used her technological resources throughout the day to help her students have interactive experiences and present education material throughout the day. Next, teachers integrate technology into their work for administrative purposes like taking attendance and responding to emails of events that could be occurring at the current time. Also, when teachers take their students to the library, this really gives the student more opportunity to advance with technology because in the library students have more advanced resources of technology that they could use on their own, which also helps the teacher integrate technology into their work as an educator. Furthermore, there are so many other ways that teachers integrate technology into their work schedules. They can assign homework to students that require the use of a computer. They can also use projectors and the internet to demonstrate different assignments and for personal use like tracking grades, attendance, and lesson planning.

Tech Tool 4.1 Online Technology Integration Resources After exploring some of the online integration resources, I could really appreciate the internet. I love the fact that there are so many resources out there to help an educator integrate technology into the classroom but also provide sufficient information to help the educator advance herself in her teaching skills.

Edutopia was a great resources, not only does it offer an overload of information on different technology topics, they also have contest for teachers to have an opportunity to win some extra tech tools themselves. Since I want to teach K-2 as my primary choice, I decided to explore this area on the site and got a lot of great information. I really enjoyed reading some of the articles and loved some of the videos I found. The video I'm posting this week was actually an idea I received from the Edutopia website called Phonics Vs. Sight Words. People were providing ideas on how where you could find additional resources.

  This Video was provided by YouTube user hooplakidz.

Chapter 4 Summary Chapter 4 provides lots of information on how to integrate technology and creating change. Along with the information provided to integrate technology, it also provides resources on getting extra information to help you integrate technology into your classroom. It also talks about how the use of technology can be divided into three separate categories: Inside-the-classroom teaching tools, Outside-the-classroom professional resources, and inside-and-outside-the-classroom learning resources for students. All three of these categories are then broken down into smaller categories with additional information that is great and how these additional resources are used as part of the job like teaching tools, office, and the learning environment. 

Chapter 4 also discusses the integration stages and issues you may come across on the job. Since every educator has a different teaching style, professional development is always required to help improve with the integration of technology. Having the appropriate support with your administration, helps curve these needs. It also brings up that educators might have an issue when using technology as a reward/punishment because reward can sometimes create destructive classroom dynamics. This will leave the student to lose interest because based on a theory from Alfie Kohn, the more you reward someone for doing something, the more they will tend to lose interest in what they had to do to get rewarded.

The digital divide, digital inequality, and the participation gap. This topic of the chapter really interested me because it talks about how students from low-income families sometimes don't have direct access to computers or internet. The term digital inequality basically says that adding more machines to home or schools will not changes or make a difference in access among different social groups.Participitation gaps occur when there is a lack of participation in student because they don't have the same opportunities as those with 24/7 access causing them to fall behind their peers.

Furthermore, chapter 4 continues to go on about how technology creates change and how teachers can create additional change with technology. This chapter I found to be very informative especially with the digital divide, digital inequality, and participation gap because I notice those things among my younger cousins who have the technology resources at home opposed to my other set of cousins who don't have the technology resources at home.