What are the basic principles to consider in using technologies effectively in the classroom?
there must be an I, a C, and a T here somewhere ...
There are, broadly speaking, two strands of concurrent thinking that dominate discussions around the use of new technologies in education around the world. At one end of the continuum, talk is dominated by words like 'transformation'. The (excellent) National Education Technology Plan of the United States (Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology), for example, calls for "applying the advanced technologies used in our daily personal and professional lives to our entire education system to improve student learning, accelerate and scale up the adoption of effective practices, and use data and information for continuous improvement." Show This is, if you will, a largely 'developed' country sort of discourse, where new technologies and approaches are layered upon older approaches and technologies in systems that largely 'work', at least from a global perspective. While the citizens of such countries may talk about a 'crisis' in their education systems (and may indeed have been talking about such a crisis for more than a generation), citizens of many other, much 'less developed' countries would happily switch places. If you want to see a true crisis in education, come have a look at our schools, they might (and do!) say, or at least the remote ones where a young teacher in an isolated village who has only received a tenth grade education tries to teach 60+ children in a dilapidated, multigrade classroom where books are scarce and many of the students (and even more of their parents) are often functionally illiterate. The potential uses of information and communication technologies -- ICTs -- are increasingly part of considerations around education planning in both sorts of places. One challenge for educational policymakers and planners in the remote, low income scenario is that most models (and expertise, and research) related to ICT use come from high-income contexts and environments (typically urban, or at least peri-urban). One consequence is that technology-enabled 'solutions' are imported and (sort of) 'made to fit' into more challenging environments. When they don't work, this is taken as 'evidence' that ICT use in education in such places is irrelevant (and some folks go so far to state that related discussions are irresponsible as a result). There is, thankfully, some emerging thinking coalescing around various types of principles and approaches that may be useful to help guide the planning and implementation of ICT in education initiatives in such environments. As part of my duties at the World Bank, I have been discussing a set of such principles and approaches with a number of groups recently, and thought I'd share them here, in case they might be of wider interest or utility to anyone else. Are they universally applicable or relevant? Probably not. But the hope is that they might be useful to organizations considering using ICTs in the education sector in very challenging environments -- especially where introducing these principles and approaches into planning discussions may cause such groups to challenge assumptions and conventional wisdom about what 'works', and how best to proceed. --- As with many lists of this sort that have featured on the EduTech blog in the past, the items presented below are not meant to be comprehensive in scope. Targeted specifically at people planning for uses of ICTs in the education sector, these principles and approaches are meant to complement and extend other, more developed thinking (informed in many cases by a rigorous evidence base) at the World Bank of the sort found in our education strategy ("Invest early, invest smartly, and invest for all"), our ICT strategy and publications such as Efficient Learning for the Poor: Insights from the Frontier of Cognitive Neuroscience. In no particular order, and with those caveats in place, here are: 10 principles or approaches to consider 1. The best technology is the one you already have, know how to
use, and can afford 2. Start down and out, and then move up and in 3. Treat teachers like the problem … and they will be 4. It’s the content, not the container 5. If you are pointed in the wrong direction, technology may help you get there more quickly 6. Anticipate, and mitigate, Matthew Effects 7. To succeed in doing something difficult, you may first need to fail (and learn from this failure) 8. Put sustainability first 9. We know a lot about worst practices -- we should make sure we don't repeat them 10. ________
Note: The image used at the top of this blog post of students and their teacher in Tibar, Timor-Leste (East Timor) ("there must be an I, a C, and a T here somewhere ...") was taken by Joao dos Santos for the World Bank (Photo ID: JDS-TL003 World Bank). It is available via the World Bank Photo Collection on Flickr and is used according to the terms of its Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). How can you use technology effectively in the classroom?9 Unique Ways to use Technology in the Classroom. Gamified learning.. Digital field trips.. Integrate social media.. Gather student feedback.. Creating digital content.. Using a shared, online classroom calendar.. Review and critique webpages.. Incorporate video and multimedia into lessons and presentations.. What are the principles of technology?Principles of Technology is an applied physics course designed to provide a study of force, work, rate, resistance, energy, and power as applied to mechanical, fluid, thermal and electrical energy systems. It is a lab-based course which is designed to present physics concepts in the context of real-world applications.
What considerations must be made to ensure students use technology in appropriate safe and effective ways?Ethics for Technology Use in the Classroom. Take care of technology equipment. ... . Explore appropriate and safe sites for learning and research. ... . Copyright law, Fair Use Act and Creative Commons matter. ... . Help prevent cyberbullying. ... . Self-image is important. ... . Make use of netiquette. ... . Always give credit to original source.. What principles should guide your approach for integrating technologies into teaching and learning?Principles for Integrating Technology Into Instruction The technological content matches specific curriculum outcomes. Target the students' needs and the learning outcome. Examine the technology choices, then decide what to use. Create opportunities to integrate technology with other (various) instructional activities.
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