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In this video series, I'm going to be answering the question of how
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teachers can be using technology in their classrooms.
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I believe really strongly that it’s no longer enough
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to just be teaching technology in a single computer science class.
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Long gone are the days of my childhood where I would go into a computer lab
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for a single hour to practice some typing,
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look for Carmen Sandiego somewhere around the world,
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hunt for different animals while I was exploring the Oregon Trail.
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Today’s world demands an entirely different approach to technology
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integration. My name is Sam Kary and this is my YouTube channel
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for The New EdTech Classroom.
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In this video I’ll be taking a look at 14 different strategies
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for how to take a holistic approach to technology integration.
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To be clear, it’s not that I believe that technology
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can fix all of the issues that we have in our education
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system today, but I do believe it can help us with engagement,
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connecting with families, helping students find their voice,
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preparing students better for the future, helping to
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inspire students to discover new talents and interests
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and potentially careers that they would want.
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And if you're interested in learning a little bit more about all the different reasons
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why I think that technology
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is important in education, make sure to check out my other
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video series that covers that topic.
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If you find my video helpful, I’d appreciate it
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if you would hit the like button, subscribe to my channel and hit the notification
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bell if you don’t want to miss any of my weekly videos, and if you have
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any questions or comments about the strategies that I suggest
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in this video, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
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The first strategy for how to take a holistic approach to education technology
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is to use digital classrooms. Digital classroom platforms
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like Google Classroom and Schoology help teachers
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organize materials, resources
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and assignments. They serve as a central hub
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where students can go to access all the other
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EdTech software that you are using in class.
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But more importantly, digital classrooms help make material in the class more accessible.
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Gone forever are the days that a student says that they can’t do work because they lost an assignment.
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If you post it to Google Classroom it’s there for everybody to see.
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You can post more than just assignments, you can also post your Google Slides lesson plans,
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so students can go back and re-look at the lessons that
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you taught. You can also have students discuss topics
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in your digital classroom. And with the digital classroom,
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parents also have access to everything that you are doing in class.
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The second way is to use technology to create student
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centered, differentiated
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learning experiences. Meeting the learning needs of all students
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in a single classroom is one of the greatest challenges
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an educator today faces.
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Technology helps teachers personalize instruction and
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deliver materials right at their instructional level.
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Personalized math instruction programs like ST Math
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help remediate math skills for students if they need
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those skills to access the curriculum. Reading programs
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like Newsela allow all students to access the same
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content at their just right reading level.
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And personalized instruction platforms like
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Khan Academy and Freckel offer a
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range of differentiation and personalized learning across
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subjects and grade levels. In addition to
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providing materials at different skill levels,
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technology also helps teachers teach to different modalities
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whether visual, auditory or experiential.
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The third strategy for how to use education technology
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is to use it to increase engagement. Engaging students
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is really hard and unfortunately in today’s
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public schools we are facing a crisis of engagement. All the
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data shows that if students are not engaged, they aren’t
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learning. Although using technology doesn’t guarantee that
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students are going to be more engaged, it does still take a highly
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skilled teacher to do that, still rather than
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lecturing, introducing new material with a
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Flocabulary rap video, an
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interactive Google Slides that you are making with Pear Deck, and then
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having students prepare for a test by playing a Kahoot game or a
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Jeopardy board that you make on Google Slides is almost
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inherently going to be more engaging for students.
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The fourth strategy is to use technology to ditch
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textbooks and flip classrooms. The idea
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of ditching textbooks comes from Matt Miller’s book, Ditch That Textbook.
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One of the key ideas that he talks about is the fact that in
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our digitized world, educators are no longer
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the holders of information. Instead of being the gatekeepers
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of information, we should be guiding students through the digital
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world to help them develop strategies to find what is most
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interesting, relevant and useful. Teachers who
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embrace their role as guide through the digital world can start
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flipping their classes, where their job is actually
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to curate sources, create video
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tutorials that students are then learning about
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on their own outside of class, the way
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that they would in the real world, so that when they come into class
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they can be engaged in more rigorous, collaborative project-based
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learning activities instead of just sitting
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and listening to a lecture and taking notes.
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The fifth strategy for how to use education technology is to give
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students the opportunity to share their knowledge in differentiated
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ways. Rather than limiting students to showing what they
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know through traditional means like tests, essays,
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and presentations, with technology and creativity
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apps, students can now show their knowledge through a
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ton of different, interesting ways that make sense to them.
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They can create podcasts,
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digital comics,
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digital books,
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There are all kinds of different possibilities. Once students learn how to use these different programs, a teacher can offer them choice
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for how they would show their learning on a future assignment.
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We know that offering students choice is a clear way
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to have students more connected to the learning that they are doing in class.
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Technology provides a clear path for how we can achieve that.
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The sixth strategy is to use technology to teach students 21st century skills.
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Imagine attending college today without skills on how to
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navigate the web, touch type, compose an
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email, collaborate on a Google Doc,
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or create a Google Slides or PowerPoint presentation.
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And students with more advanced computing skills in coding,
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web design, app creation, robotics
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will almost certainly have a leg up in the future
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job market. Although lots of students from more affluent backgrounds
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will probably learn these skills outside of school,
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for many of our students, school will be the only
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opportunity they have to teach these skills.
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It’s our responsibility to do so.
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The seventh strategy for using education technology is to bring abstract experiences
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to life through augmented reality and
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and virtual reality. The fact is that
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many times, despite a teacher’s efforts, students lack the
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schema to understand new concepts. I am personally
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an experiential learner. I totally
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empathize with the fact that sometimes it’s hard to learn something
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unless you experience it for yourself. Augmented reality
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and virtual reality has the potential to fill that gap.
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Immersive virtual reality experiences
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offered in Google Expeditions can literally drop
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students inside of a geographic location or inside
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of a cell in a human body. Preliminary studies
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have also shown that virtual reality can have an impact on
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increasing a person’s empathy for another person’s experience
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because you have literally just walked in that person’s shoes.
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Similarly, augmented reality platforms
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like Merge allow students to literally hold a
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dynamic globe or human organ in the
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palm of their hand. And programs like CoSpaces
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and Adobe Arrow allow students to actually create
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virtual reality and augmented reality
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themselves. Virtual reality and augmented reality
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is definitely an emerging technology, but it has a lot of
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exciting potential for what it can do to change education.
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The eighth strategy is to use technology to expand classroom walls.
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In an ideal world all students across the nation would be able to take field trips
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anywhere they wanted, connect with educators all around the world,
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and build relationships with other international students.
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Technology affords students some of these opportunities. Students
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can use tools like Skype and Google Hangouts to go on
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virtual field trips, to meet classes around the world,
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or to have a scientist from National Geographic
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do a lecture from the field. Even with unlimited
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budgets, students wouldn’t be able to experience all the different things
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that they could through technology. Technology can help
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redefine the classroom from a brick and mortar structure and help
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connect students with others all around the world.
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The ninth strategy is to use technology to teach our
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students digital citizenship skills. We are currently
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living in a world that has been dramatically
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impacted from rapid technological change. We need
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to be equipping students with the right skills that they will need in order
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to navigate the digital world and to make respectful and responsible
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choices in digital spaces. PBS Learning Media
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and Common Sense offer educators free resources
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for how to teach students about important
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life skills, such as digital footprints,
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cyberbullying, determining whether or not information on the
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Internet is reliable, as well as the implications of oversharing.
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The tenth strategy is to use technology to
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promote social sharing. Whether or not you agree
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or disagree with the concept of being a digital native, the
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reality is that students today are used to sharing with other people and
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really like doing it. Rather than fight
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against it, educators today should embrace the fact that students
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want to share what they have created with their friends. Educators can
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leverage this impulse to try to motivate students to do
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their absolute best. When students know that they are going to be sharing
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what they have created with others and not just the teacher,
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they tend to be more motivated to do their best work. Sharing work
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with peers as well as others outside the classroom
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also imbues their work with more meaning. Students understand
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that they are making something that other people are actually
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going to read or watch or participate in in some way.
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They are not just doing school in the way that I did school, where I
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wrote a paper and gave it to my teacher and beyond that
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my work wasn’t really shared or read
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by anybody else. It’s kind of sad
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that all my hard work sort of went to waste. Many technology apps
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are set up to help promote social sharing. Padlet is a
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free bulletin board where students can post
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different pieces of work that they have created
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and then comment on them. I use Padlet all the time in my
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class for students to share what they have created with each other and they
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absolutely love it. Apps like BookCreator facilitate social
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sharing of digital books by creating a digital library
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that can be shared with other students in the class, the school,
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or even the world outside of them.
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And then programs like Flipgrid
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allows students to record short videos to explain
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their thinking or showcase their knowledge and then share
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those videos within your classroom, where students can then create video responses to each other.
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The eleventh strategy is that technology helps students develop
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collaboration skills. Students have to learn collaboration skills in order to be
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successful in higher education and in their careers. Learning to work in diverse teams
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to solve complex problems is one of the most important skills
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that a teacher can teach. Unfortunately teaching
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collaboration isn’t that easy. It’s not like you can just create an activity,
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throw a group of students together and say hey,
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do that. Technology helps teachers develop collaboration
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in two important ways. The first is that it provides
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the tools necessary for collaboration. Students can
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edit the same document together from different locations
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or hop on video or text chats to talk
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about the work that they’re doing. And secondly, technology
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helps teachers create tasks that are complex
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enough to merit collaboration. One of the biggest problems
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with collaborative activities in schools is that a lot of
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the tasks that students are asked to do are simply not all
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that complex and don’t actually merit having four people
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working on that activity. One of the complex collaborative tasks
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I like doing with my students is having them
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create a green screen video. In order to do that,
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they have to plan together, record a video together,
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and edit that video together. It’s the kind of task that would be very difficult to do
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if there were only one or two students working on the project.
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The twelfth strategy is to use technology to help students develop
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metacognition. I know when I got
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into education it was my mission to imbue
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a love of learning and self-awareness
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in my students. Getting students to take ownership over
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their own learning is perhaps the most powerful lesson
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a teacher can teach. I’m a huge believer that students should
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be setting smart goals and tracking their academic progress
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throughout the year to build a sense of autonomy and
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self-efficacy. Tools like Google Sheets,
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Google Docs, and Seesaw allow students to track their
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academic progress over the course of the year. They can also be shared with
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family so that they’re more kept in the loop.
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That brings me to my thirteenth strategy,
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which is to use technology to enhance family engagement.
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Research shows that when families are more connected to schools,
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students perform better. Technology facilitates greater
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family involvement in many ways. Once you set up
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your digital classroom, families can now see all of the different
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things that students are doing in school. Parents can easily
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sign up to get notifications from digital
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portfolio programs like Seesaw, so every time
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students upload a piece of work into their portfolio,
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the parent gets to see it and comment on it as well.
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Opening up this window into what is
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happening in school also helps students
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understand that the work that they are creating matters.
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My last strategy for how to take a holistic approach to
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technology integration in schools is to use
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technology to improve teacher practice. I’ve worked with
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numerous educators and every single one I know
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wants to improve their practice to improve outcomes
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for students. Unfortunately, teacher professional
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development violates nearly every standard we set
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for good teaching practice. It isn’t personalized,
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differentiated, experiential, or presented
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keeping different learning modalities in mind. Numerous technology tools
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exist to address this need. Teacher created YouTube channels
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like this one can help teachers develop new strategies for technology
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integration that they want to bring into their classrooms. Similarly,
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teacher blogs and Twitter provide lots of
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different ideas that teachers can use in their classroom. There is some interesting stuff
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going on in artificial intelligence as well. Teachers can use an
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A.I. program called TeachFX and it will analyze the percentage of
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student talk versus teacher talk in your
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classroom, so you can adjust your practice
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to improve student engagement. Private video sharing platforms
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like Edthena support teacher development by allowing
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teachers to virtually visit and analyze other
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classrooms in order to learn from other educators.
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Used in tandem with thoughtfully planned and skilled instruction,
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education technology has the power to improve academic
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outcomes and to transform the educational
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experience for students, families, and teachers.
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I’m sure I missed some ways that technology can be used in
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education and I’d love to hear
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your thoughts in the comments below.