2.1 Content Standards & Student Technology Standards
Candidates model and facilitate the design and implementation of technology-enhanced learning experiences aligned with student content standards and student technology standards. (PSC 2.1/ISTE 2a)
Artifact: Content Area Report (ITEC 7400)
Reflection:
The Content Area Report seen here was prepared as part of ITEC 7400, 21st Century Teaching and Learning. The purpose of the Content Area Report is to summarize for other educators how instructional technologies can support Engaged Learning and high Levels of Technology Integration (LoTi) levels in a specific content area. This artifact involved research of content-area standards and application of various instructional technologies to enable students to reach higher achievement levels and deeper engagement in the Advanced Placement (AP) second language classroom.
Developing this artifact allowed me to demonstrate mastery of Standard 2.1, which says that “candidates model and facilitate the design and implementation of technology-enhanced learning experiences aligned with student content standards and student technology standards.” Creating projects and presentations that are aligned to content standards is something that is common in every classroom. Educators in the 21st century must move their presentations into the 21st century as well. Therefore, when preparing this artifact, I searched for ways to model the presentation skills needed by students. It was also important to collect a variety of instructional technology tools that would allow teachers to recreate the skills needed by students to be successful writers in the AP Language classroom in a way that both integrated technology and allowed for continued improvement of those writing skills.
When planning for and creating this artifact, I realized new ways of technology integration that can enable students to relate the tasks being performed in the AP Language classroom to the outside world, tasks that they will complete one day as a professional and tasks that they perform today as a citizen of today’s globally-connected society. It is vital that students understand that the skills they learn in the classroom have relevance outside of school as well. However, the relevance sometimes needs to be explained to them and teachers often forget that the skill is not necessarily the task. When I distributed this presentation to members of the Secondary Foreign Language Department in Forsyth County Schools, many teachers commented that they had not yet made the connection that the skills required to achieve a high score on the AP Language exam of interpersonal and presentational writing are important in any language. One of those technologies, Microsoft Office’s spell and grammar check, is very basic, but many language teachers prefer to have students write and revise by hand. While this does correspond to what will be done on the AP exam, it does not teach them the skills they will use once they leave the insulated school environment. Another such technology was Prezi, a Web 2.0 presentation tool. Prezi encourages students to move beyond Power Point and to focus on the design and appearance of the presentation rather than simply inserting text into a slide that the presenter then reads to the audience. A final technology tool introduced in the presentation was VoiceThread, another presentation tool that encourages commentary. By moving presentations and discussion boards to VoiceThread, students can prepare their commentary in advance and revise as needed. Students can make comments via text, audio, or video and consequently allows students to self-correct and focus on multiple skills through one task. These tasks are not simply an exercise in verb conjugation and vocabulary acquisition, but rather a way to demonstrate important skills in the professional world.
If I were to recreate this artifact today, I would expand my focus to writing in any AP classroom. All AP exams require writing but many do not emphasize the skills needed due to the time required. If more teachers of pre-AP courses were exposed to these requirements, student achievement could increase dramatically.
The Content Area Report seen here was prepared as part of ITEC 7400, 21st Century Teaching and Learning. The purpose of the Content Area Report is to summarize for other educators how instructional technologies can support Engaged Learning and high Levels of Technology Integration (LoTi) levels in a specific content area. This artifact involved research of content-area standards and application of various instructional technologies to enable students to reach higher achievement levels and deeper engagement in the Advanced Placement (AP) second language classroom.
Developing this artifact allowed me to demonstrate mastery of Standard 2.1, which says that “candidates model and facilitate the design and implementation of technology-enhanced learning experiences aligned with student content standards and student technology standards.” Creating projects and presentations that are aligned to content standards is something that is common in every classroom. Educators in the 21st century must move their presentations into the 21st century as well. Therefore, when preparing this artifact, I searched for ways to model the presentation skills needed by students. It was also important to collect a variety of instructional technology tools that would allow teachers to recreate the skills needed by students to be successful writers in the AP Language classroom in a way that both integrated technology and allowed for continued improvement of those writing skills.
When planning for and creating this artifact, I realized new ways of technology integration that can enable students to relate the tasks being performed in the AP Language classroom to the outside world, tasks that they will complete one day as a professional and tasks that they perform today as a citizen of today’s globally-connected society. It is vital that students understand that the skills they learn in the classroom have relevance outside of school as well. However, the relevance sometimes needs to be explained to them and teachers often forget that the skill is not necessarily the task. When I distributed this presentation to members of the Secondary Foreign Language Department in Forsyth County Schools, many teachers commented that they had not yet made the connection that the skills required to achieve a high score on the AP Language exam of interpersonal and presentational writing are important in any language. One of those technologies, Microsoft Office’s spell and grammar check, is very basic, but many language teachers prefer to have students write and revise by hand. While this does correspond to what will be done on the AP exam, it does not teach them the skills they will use once they leave the insulated school environment. Another such technology was Prezi, a Web 2.0 presentation tool. Prezi encourages students to move beyond Power Point and to focus on the design and appearance of the presentation rather than simply inserting text into a slide that the presenter then reads to the audience. A final technology tool introduced in the presentation was VoiceThread, another presentation tool that encourages commentary. By moving presentations and discussion boards to VoiceThread, students can prepare their commentary in advance and revise as needed. Students can make comments via text, audio, or video and consequently allows students to self-correct and focus on multiple skills through one task. These tasks are not simply an exercise in verb conjugation and vocabulary acquisition, but rather a way to demonstrate important skills in the professional world.
If I were to recreate this artifact today, I would expand my focus to writing in any AP classroom. All AP exams require writing but many do not emphasize the skills needed due to the time required. If more teachers of pre-AP courses were exposed to these requirements, student achievement could increase dramatically.
