Infusing Technology in the K-5 Classroom

A Guide to Meeting Today's Academic Standards

Valerie Morrison, Stephanie Novak, Tim Vanderwerff

• Editore: International Society for Technology in Education
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781564847430
• Argomento: Education
• Categoria: Teaching Science & Technology

K-5 teachers will discover how to integrate the tech requirements found within today's academic standards into their everyday curriculum. Perhaps your district provides current technology development for staff on a regular basis and has instructional coaches to help teachers infuse technology into their curriculum to meet various academic standards. But in reality, most districts don't have this kind of support. In this book (the first in a two-book series), you'll learn how to shift your instructional practice and leverage technology to meet today's curriculum education standards for grades K-5. This book doesn't cover every K-5 national standard, but identifies the standards with a technology component and provides resources and lessons to help you teach those standards effectively.This book includes:

• Classroom-tested lesson ideas in English language arts, math, science and social studies mapped to ISTE and tech-related standards to support college- and career-readiness.
• Lists of technology-embedded college- and career-readiness standards for each grade level, along with practical ideas and up-to-date resources (apps, software and websites) that can be used in meeting these standards.
• Suggestions for addressing roadblocks to incorporating technology in the classroom.
• Ways to incorporate staff development and parental support at the school level.
• Access to a companion website with information on the tools referenced in the text.

With the implementation of these strategies, you'll help your students become self-directed and critical readers, writers and thinkers so they're better prepared for the future! Audience: K-5 educators, curriculum specialists, tech coordinators

Chapter 1

Today’s Students

A two-year-old taking a selfie? Seven-year-olds tweeting? No doubt about it, today’s students come to school knowing more technology than ever before. New educational research suggests that offering a variety of learning opportunities, including lots of technology options, may be the best way to engage today’s generation of learners. Educators must respond to this generation and address its unique learning needs. We believe this so passionately that we think a chapter about this subject is a must in any book about teaching children in the digital age. Technology must be made available to students. Technology must become ubiquitous.

The CCSS are designed to upgrade our school system’s standards to meet the needs of prospective high school graduates who want to get into a good college or land a great job. They are designed with the tech-savvy child in mind. More specifically, the standards are designed with students’ future workplaces in mind. That is the driving force behind the technology we see in the standards, and it is why teaching to your students’ future needs is extremely important. Please keep this mind as you read this chapter.

Who Are Your Students?

Today’s students grew up using digital technology and mass media. According to Debra Szybinski, executive director at New York University’s Faculty Resource Network (tinyurl.com/y22s3kzo), this generation is:

[A] generation characterized by some as self-absorbed, short attention spanned digital addicts who disrespect authority and assume that they can control what, when, and how they learn, and by others as smart, self-assured technology wizards who follow the rules and who are on their way to becoming the powerhouse generation. Clearly, this is a generation like no other, and that has posed an entirely new set of challenges both in and out of the classroom for faculty members and administrators alike. (2016)

This current generation is ever changing. New technologies and new media are constantly invented and refined, creating pressure on schools to evolve. Most students entering school now are completely immersed in technology outside of school.

Ironically, at many schools, there is a disconnect from students’ real lives and their way of learning. Schools are often islands of twentieth-century thinking in what is now a digital age. Schools must do a better job of reaching the current generation of students; making technology available to students at school helps educators respond to and address students’ unique learning needs.

What Does This Generation Know and Do?

Most students entering kindergarten now have access to desktop computers, smartphones, tablets, and laptops at home. These children begin using most of these devices by the time they are three years old. Whether you go to playgroups, parks, or other places frequented by young children, you’re likely to see them working on their parents’ tablets or smartphones (or begging to use them!). These students come to us with skills that include (but are not limited to) swiping to work an app; navigating a mouse to play computer games; operating their own electronic devices, such as children’s learning tablets, handheld learning devices, and interactive video games; and hunting and pecking on the keyboard to send emails. Also, our tech-savvy students can take videos and photos using a tablet or smartphone, as well as converse with someone by texting, blogging, and messaging. Most have been exposed to the internet and understand that they can find almost any information there.

Because they have so much information at the touch of a button, and constant stimulation around them, this generation often attempts to multitask. It makes sense to them to watch TV, send a text, and find out what the weather will be all at the same time!

Some say that the current generation has hovering parents and a sense of entitlement. While this may be taken as a negative, having parents who are involved with their children and their children’s school is a good thing, as it strengthens the home–school connection. Students with parents who are involved in their academic lives can be better students, and they are less afraid to try new things. We, as educators, need to recognize these traits and use them to help students reach their maximum potential.

Being social is very important to the students in this tech-savvy generation. They are certainly the “in-touch” generation, with immediate access to texts, emails, social networking sites, and even the sound of a human voice at the other end of the line. This generation is lost when their smartphones or tablets break; they feel “cut off from the world” when they don’t have instant access to the internet.

How Has Technology Affected Students’ Minds?

By the time they’re in their twenties, today’s students will have spent thousands of hours surfing the internet and playing video games. This vast amount of screen time seems to be shortening their attention spans. At a time when their brains are particularly sensitive to outside influences, excessive screen time affects the way they learn and absorb information.

Furthermore, this generation rarely reads books to find information. Online search engines are prevalent in providing all of the information they need quickly, without having to go through a book from cover to cover. With access to an overabundance of information, they need to be skilled hunters who know how to sift through data quickly and efficiently. This new type of learner doesn’t necessarily read from left to right or from beginning to end. Visuals help today’s students absorb more information than they do from straight text. Thus, students become better scanners, a useful skill when confronted with masses of online information in a world that’s full of noise and multiple stimulations. So, most modern students have learned to block out distractions while they focus on the task at hand.

How Has Technology Affected Behavior?

There is less and less face-to-face communication taking place because of constant technology use. We have seen instances of parents and children sitting next to one another without speaking at a restaurant. Instead, they simply sit and quietly engage with their individual tablets or smartphones.

There are many debates about how technology helps or harms the development of a student’s thinking. Of course, this depends on the specific technology used, as well as how and with what frequency it is used in school. Our duty as educators is to decide what technology to use in the classroom and when, because technology influences students’ thought processes. We must be aware of this effect to guide our students as digital age learners.

How Do We Move Beyond the ABCs?

Education has gone through a monumental transformation in the last twenty years. Some changes have greatly improved the way teachers educate, while others are still under evaluation. Great educational debates, such as teacher-directed versus self-directed learning in the maker movement, are cases in point. What we have found during our years of experience is that to progress in the classroom, teachers must adapt to the times, adopting new techniques while using time-tested methods. Success in teaching a new generation of students isn’t based solely on what educators are teaching students but how educators are teaching them.

We have seen our share of success stories and our share of students who struggled for reasons that are completely preventable if these students have the right tools. For these highly activity-scheduled and gadget-oriented students, traditional one-size-fits-all teaching is no longer effective. Sitting behind a desk, listening to the teacher talk, and reading from a textbook are completely ineffective. This generation of students needs to be engaged in active and interactive learning to enhance their knowledge. They do not want technology just because it is “cool.” They need technology because it drives their world (now and in the future). They are looking for something dynamic to make learning come alive—to make it different and interesting every day. Being connected accomplishes that goal.

How Can Educators Succeed in the Digital Age?

Thinking of technology as a new toy that will go away or doesn’t have a place in education is no longer an option. Educators need to embrace technology and tap into what our students are already coming to us with, using it to advance their learning. But this technology cannot just be digital worksheets!

This is not always easy, especially when students know more about how to use the technology than many teachers. Therefore, it is our duty to catch up and make sure we know what our students know. This can be done in many different ways; however, the easiest way is to do what they do: pick up tablets or smartphones and start using apps that they use! Once we have the background skills to know what our students know, we can move forward. We simply need to remember that technology is a tool. And we can use these tools like anything else we use in education—manipulatives in math, novels in reading, and microscopes in science, to name a few.

Of course, this new reality being imposed on and by the current generation has implications for you as a teacher. It used to be that students conducted research by using books that were from credible publishers, and those books had been rigorously edited and fact-checked. This generation uses the internet almost exclusively. If your students get all of their information from the internet, then you must teach them media literacy skills. This skill set has become extremely important in an information age where children need to discern fiction from fact on the internet when, sometimes, adults have trouble differentiating it for ourselves.

You need to tap into what your students are experiencing every day and use it to your advantage. Many of your current students will work in very social settings but in a different way than previous generations. Let them work often as partners or in groups to create multimedia presentations or digital videos. Because they love to send texts and video chat, let them text, instant message, or video chat with students around the world! This generation is good at multitasking. Allow them to do more things at once, such as collaborate with others while taking notes on a research paper. Students all know how to use a smartphone, so when on a field trip, let them record a video of what they are seeing. They are used to constant noise and stimulation. Do not make them work quietly at their desks; rather, they should work with hands-on activities like live apps, green-screen technology, or maker labs. Students know at a very young age how to navigate the internet. Let them use a computer when they have a question instead of asking you for the answer.

We know this new generation of children, teenagers, and young adults can be challenging because of how digital technology has changed their way of learning and behaviors. The following chapters will further address some of these issues and how their learning must be specialized, giving more examples of how to integrate technology with the CCSS. These standards keep this new generation of students in mind, and so will we.

Chapter 2

Parent Education

The past decade has been financially difficult for schools. States across the country have had to slash education budgets due to economic downturns. If your district’s budget was unaffected by financial cuts, it is among the few. As for the rest of us, we have had to achieve more with less. To make matters more challenging, we had to implement new standards that ask schools to immerse students in technology—a very expensive task. Having parents on your side in this budget struggle can be very helpful.

In the years since the CCSS were written and adopted by most states, some attitudes toward the standards have changed. More recently, parents and community members have questioned them. So it is important, as a teacher, to be proactive in getting the word out about what is going on in your classroom. Work with parents and the community to educate them about CCR standards in your state, district, and school. Parents only want what is best for their children, and a little reassurance from you can go a long way.

This reassurance begins with listening to parents. Ask them about their concerns. Answering their questions with facts will help them to better understand why your state adopted the standards. The following are a few of the technology concerns that have been raised about CCSS recently. Knowing about these and other controversial issues allows you to defuse concerns before they become major issues.

Why Do Parents Need to Know about Technology Standards?

You don’t need technology to read or do math—civilizations have been doing both for centuries. Nevertheless, technology does help in both areas. If we were still at the turn of the last millennium (1000 AD), we would be hand-copying books. The printing press brought books to the commoner and education to those who wanted to learn. The abacus is fine but cannot compete with a calculator or computer. Technology marches on so that we can advance, learn more, and pass that knowledge along to the next generation.

The computer revolution of the last century hit the classroom with the encouragement of the CCR standards. Before these standards, computers were for schools with money or those who won grants. Even so, many schools that were considered advanced had not integrated technology into everyday learning. These were the first set of widely recognized standards to do that. There are several reasons for parents to know about CCSS.

First, keeping students versed in the fundamentals of technology will enhance your teaching tremendously, and students’ parents can help with this at home. Survey parents to see how many students have internet access at home. What kind of equipment do they use—do they have cameras or video capabilities? What do they allow their children to use? Knowing what your students have at home levels the playing field in the classroom. Encourage parents to teach their children how to properly use tablets, computers, smartphones and other mobile devices so students come more prepared to school.

Second, learning doesn’t happen only at school. You need to educate parents because they are the main support system for learning outside of school. Consistent, clear standards put forward by CCR standards enable more effective learning. Knowing what technology and what software will be used to master these standards greatly assists parents and, in turn, their children. Look at the Global Family Research Project (tinyurl.com/hguh777) for the latest research and insights on how to get students’ parents involved.

Third, technology can instantly link parents to what their children are learning. Knowing assignments, communicating with teachers, and understanding what is expected are all improved with today’s technology. There is even a principal out there who tried “flipping” parent communication, which you might try too (DeWitt, 2013). Whatever you implement is a win-win for you and your students. Take advantage of technology in communication; don’t shun it. It will make your life easier.

Finally, we are becoming a smaller, more codependent world. To have a world-class education that keeps our nation and civilization moving forward, all students need to be well versed in the newest technologies. That is what the CCR standards are all about! The CCSS Initiative’s mission statement affirms, “The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). In other words, the CCSS are designed for your students’ success as adults in the workplace, of which technology is an integral part.

Even so, parents must be a part of this endeavor or their children will struggle to succeed. Involving them is as important to you, as a teacher, as is a...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About ISTE
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Today’s Students
• Chapter 2: Parent Education
• Chapter 3: Roadblocks to Technology
• Chapter 4: Staff Development
• Chapter 5: Organization of the Standards
• Chapter 6: Technology in the Common Core
• Chapter 7: Implementing Practical Ideas
• Chapter 8: Practical Ideas for Kindergarten
• Chapter 9: Practical Ideas for First Grade
• Chapter 10: Practical Ideas for Second Grade
• Chapter 11: Practical Ideas for Third Grade
• Chapter 12: Practical Ideas for Fourth Grade
• Chapter 13: Practical Ideas for Fifth Grade
• References