Archives - August/September 2006
Surf Your Way to an Integrated Classroom
Bill Byles, co-founder of Internet4Classrooms, Memphis, TN
Often, the solution to integrating academics and technology is only a few mouse-clicks away. Although it can be difficult to find exactly what you want by performing a search using a standard search engine, many sites now exist to help educators find appropriate content. Find two or three good sources and those can lead you to many others. Don't forget to bookmark the best sites you find!
When to Use Technology
However, I want to focus our discussion on what Susan Brooks and I have learned from working with teachers in their classrooms and during professional development sessions.
First, and most important, relax. Don’t feel like you must force technology into every lesson, every day. Your primary goal is to help students develop the skills they need for when they leave the classroom. My guiding principle is, "Use technology to teach a subject that can most easily be taught by using technology." Again, don’t force it.
Let’s say you want to conduct a lesson in economics to prepare your students for life after school. You could lecture them about your own personal experience, show a videotape or DVD, or rely on the textbook. However, there is an online survey where students fill out what they want life to be like after school (apartment, car, eating out, etc). At the completion of the survey the students get a "Reality Check". Here students discover what income is necessary to support the life style they’ve imagined.
This lesson is an example of how technology integration can effectively be used to teach your students. You can access the survey on
Jumpstart's Web site.
How to Use Technology
As good as this site is, if your students are not given a specific task to accomplish while taking the survey, they probably will not understand the lesson. Have your students take notes on the information presented, and then give them an activity that uses the collected material. The follow up activity need not be technology based, although it could be. A homework assignment related to the same topic gives your student a third chance to learn what you wanted to teach.
One way to assign the specific task is to provide Task Cards which students would use while at the computer. The ideal Task Card will anticipate questions that students would have while working with their partner at a computer. Once you have addressed some of the students’ initial questions on the Task Cards, you are free to work with other students without interruption. If Task Cards are a new idea to you, take a look at our Web site,
Internet4Classrooms. On that page you will find a template to create your own Task Cards.
Finding technology to integrate into the classroom may require some initial Internet research on your part. But once you discover what’s out there, integrating technology will become more familiar to you and will create a more enjoyable atmosphere for your students.
See the
Stay Connected page for more information and links to the Internet4classrooms Web site.
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Decades: Anatomy of a Cross-Curricular Project
Erik Amerikaner, Westlake High School, Westlake Village, CA
At Westlake High School, we’ve developed an interesting solution to the problem of seamlessly integrating our core curriculum with computer technology. In our small learning community within the school, the Westlake Information Technology Academy, we assign our sophomores a semester-long integrated project . We have 120 students tenth through twelfth grade students. They take core classes: English, social science, science and technology within the Academy setting. In tenth grade technology students become proficient enough in MS Office during the first semester to pass the MOS exams.
The Project
During their second semester, students work on a cross-curricular project titled "Decades". The core teachers and technology teacher use their common planning time to develop the requirements, curriculum, rubrics, and time schedule. We introduce the project as a team using a PowerPoint© presentation and post the project on the Academy Web site. Students are assigned teams and decades using a random drawing.
Each team works together to research, write, develop, and design a presentation based upon the assigned decade. Teams research literature and authors during their English classes; world and U.S. history during their social studies classes; and science and technology during their science classes. All the research is compiled and developed into Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Web sites in their Technology class. The capstone event is a public presentation of the research at the end of the semester.
Research and Development
During the research and development phase, the team members assign tasks and timelines using basic project management templates. Working with the core curriculum teachers, students research the decade assigned and develop an outline of the key events, people, inventions, and developments that occurred during the decade.
Our core classes still have to complete the standard curriculum, so only one or two days per week is available for research. During Technology class, teams format the basic outline, and begin to add audio-visual components. Students develop the outline into Word documents, which are reviewed by the core teachers. The Technology teacher gives each group a weekly progress check to assess group dynamics, timelines, and achievement of milestones.
The Presentation
As the semester progresses, teams build PowerPoint presentations showcasing their research. Different team members are assigned components of the presentation including writing, art-work/photos, video clips, and sound clips. Use permission and copyright issues are discussed in Technology class. Teams then collaborate and critique each other’s presentations.
During the final third of the semester, teams transform their presentations into Web sites. They are required to have a home page and multiple linked pages for each topic area. By this stage, team members have become proficient in various programs including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Macromedia Dreamweaver. After the Web sites are debugged, they are posted on the Web through the Academy’s Web site, where they can be viewed by parents, friends, and the public.
The Technology Fair
The capstone event is the Technology Fair, where teams display their PowerPoint presentations and artifacts collected reflecting the decade. Teams run tables in the school media center equipped with a PC and monitor and show the presentations while answering questions from the parents, staff, and interested public. Team members dress up in period costume and serve food and drink samples from their decade. During the presentations, staff and administrators use a rubric score to grade the presentations. During the "debrief", team members score their own group members for cooperation, involvement, and knowledge. This score is factored into the group score. This permits flexibility in grading. Students who excelled are given better scores than students who did not participate as thoroughly. This project encourages students to participate, learn multiple skills, gain useful knowledge in many subjects, and have fun in the process!
See the completed projects from spring 2006 at:
Decades Project.
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