Media Center Orientation

I incorporate quite a bit of technology into my media center lessons during the course of the year, and this is one example. For each class’s first visit to the media center, we do an orientation. For kindergarten and first, we just go over how to check out and take care of books. But for second through fourth, we do a few electronic games to review the media center rules. These games are just PowerPoint re-creations of the game shows “Jeopardy” and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”, and since I have a ceiling-mounted LCD projector, I project the game onto a very large screen (which continues to entertain the kids when I push the button to make it go up and down, even though they’ve seen it many times!). We divide the class into teams (girls versus boys is always popular) and the teams take turns attempting to answer the questions. The Jeopardy game is especially popular because I created five categories for them to choose their questions from, each category covering a particular aspect of the media center. The games really engage the students and I even had one student tell me that it was “much more fun to learn the rules with this game”. I’ve used these same games for several years but because I have a different one for each grade, the students aren’t doing the same one every year. The actual PowerPoint files were created by some anonymous person and obtained for us by one of our academic coaches. I just filled in the blanks. It’s a simple but effective way of using technology to make an otherwise dreary subject just a little bit more interesting.

My Definition of Technology Integration - Blog #1

Technology integration is the incorporation of various kinds of digital devices and media into an elementary, middle or high school teacher’s lessons in an effort to enhance the curriculum being covered, engage the students, and introduce new technologies to the students. The term technology includes, but is not limited to, computers and applicable software, digital video and still cameras, mp3 players, interactive whiteboards, student response systems, the Internet, e-books, CDs, DVDs, digital voice recorders, and video games.

Successful technology integration occurs in a number of ways. First, technology integration can be successful if teachers ensure that a lesson combined with technology will be more effective in developing a student’s understanding of an idea than the same lesson without technology. In other words, technology should enhance the lesson, not distract or confuse the student. Secondly, technology integration should educate the student not only in the course material, but in the technology itself, either through use of the technology in follow-up assignments, or by allowing students to interact with the technology during the lesson. Lessons infused with technology should also be standards-based, and should promote the development of higher-order thinking skills. Finally and most importantly, technology integration will only prevail if school administrators make technology use a priority in their schools. In order to accomplish this, they must regularly purchase new software and devices, provide adequate training and support for the teachers, and encourage and allow time for teachers to work together and increase each other’s confidence in using technology.

First Try

My group members and I call ourselves "Media Madness", and our intent is to use our blogs as a means to reflect and report on new discoveries within the world of technology integration. One of my career goals is to help lead our teachers further into technology use in their classrooms, and I know that all of the discoveries I make in this class will help me do that. Our group members are Kelly Massey, Krista Bowen, Chris Valentine, Keri Rhinehart and myself. Although I've never created a blog before and this seems a bit overwhelming, I know blogging is a technology I need to become familiar with.