EDLD+5364+Week+2

=**My Impressions from Week Two of EDLD 5364**=


 * Technology With a Purpose**

This week's videos and readings focused on applying technology in the classroom in a meaningful way. From objective-focused lessons and using software to facilitate this process to in-depth analysis of studies done on technology integration, the readings gave a clear view of what has been proven to work, what doesn't, and possible directions for future technology integration in the classroom. One thing that struck me about the analysis of the research was how old the research quoted in the article seemed to be (most of the studies being done from ten years ago and beyond). Technology is evolving practically by the second and I was surprised we weren't directed to a reading that focused on a more-recent study. Perhaps there is a lack of this type of study or the reports from such studies are not readily available at this point.

At first glance, I felt the reading in //Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works// by Howard Pitler et al was fairly obvious. "At the start of the planning process, the first question for a teacher to answer is usually the most obvious: //What knowledge and skills do I want my students to have at the end of this lesson or unit?"// Really? No kidding! But then I realized the chapter had a more direct focus on the objective-setting process (some parts which I had not considered in the past) as well as using technology tools to facilitate this process. I found the idea of allowing students flexibility to personalize learning objectives intriguing and will ponder and research elementary applications of this idea in the future. I have often wanted to communicate objectives to parents and thought of various ways but none seemed practical. Currently, my campus is using an online lesson planner that allows you to publish all or part of each lesson plan to your class page. I have been using this feature for over a year now. The only problem is: I have no way of knowing what parents, if any, are taking advantage of this feature. The school website also allows parents to subscribe to class pages and then sends them updates (frequency is at their request during setup). I signed up last year as a "parent" and, without fail, my class update arrives in my email inbox every Friday. These are great communication tools for parents to help the educational process along. Our next challenge as teachers appears to be getting parents up to speed on how to use them.