Monday, May 17, 2010

Integration of Technology into Your Curriculum

Integrating technology into your curriculum seems to be the new buzz saying in education, but what does this really mean? We hear that students are spending countless hours on their cell phones, computers and iPods at home while multi-tasking but what are we doing in the classrooms to keep their attention and preparing them for the work of tomorrow? If you have not viewed the YouTube videos titled: A Vision of Students Today,” or “A Vision of K-12 Students Today,” please do so, you will find it very enlightening.

Integrating technology into your curriculum no longer means to have a separate classroom dedicated to typing and computer skills. This means you need to enhance the learning going on in the classroom by adding new ways to research, explore, engage, participate, interact, and assess your lessons. On Edutopia’s website,http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-introduction , it states; “Technology is ubiquitous, touching almost every part of our lives, our communities, our homes. Yet most schools lag far behind when it comes to integrating technology into classroom learning. Many are just beginning to explore the true potential tech offers for teaching and learning. Properly used, technology will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy.” Is your curriculum currently helping students to acquire these skills? Technology should not solely be your curriculum but it should contribute to the already great teaching and learning that is going on. A great website about integrating technology in curriculum is http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/antifaiff/antifaiff.htm.

Texas ASCD is offering a new summer conference titled, Integration of 21st Century Skills Across the Curriculum, to be held in Dallas on June 28th-30th. We hope you can join us for 21st Century skills on the web, aligning technology to curriculum through rigorous and motivating assignments in core areas, and collaborative tools for sustainable improvement. To find out more information on our conference, visit our website at http://www.txascd.org/development/index.html.

In closing, I ask these questions:

Why not? What would technology do to our learning? What are we afraid of?