When I think of teachers in my academic career that incorporated technology into their classrooms, my high school English teacher comes to mind. I'm not sure that I would describe Mrs. H as tech-savvy, per se, because this was back in 2001 and most of the technology use was your average movies in the classroom or going to the computer lab for research. However, there was one assignment that Mrs. H composed in which she creatively and effectively incorporated technology that still sticks with me to this day.
The assignment was just another boring, old vocabulary test, but Mrs. H energized it with the creative use of technology. We picked groups of three students or so, and then each group was given a list of vocab words and was assigned one of them. Our task was to make a short video that captured the definition of the word assigned to our group. (I think we were supposed to use our own video cameras if we had them, but if we didn't, we could use the school's.) So each group made their short video, and then Friday we presented them to the class and then took the test.
The incorporation of technology made the assignment incredibly fun and engaging. Rather than just memorizing a list of words, we were able to actually get creative with it and make it unique. Creating and visualizing the videos was very effective in my grasping the vocab.
Hey T! Great start to your blog here!
ReplyDeleteAs your post highlights very well, the effective use of technology in education often isn't super flashy or complicated. The technology extends the capabilities of the student and/or the teacher in a way that really matches the activities necessary to achieve the learning, itself! Great post. ~j.