Integrating Technology

Technology is more present now than it has ever been in our schools and in our society in general. Many people may see issues with using technology within the classroom, and there may be disadvantages, but it would be a waste of a resource to not utilize it. In the book Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, Fenice Boyd and Andrea Tochelli address the advantages of using multimodal instruction in the classroom. They tell the story of a teacher who had her students look beyond their given text to really investigate and understand the Little Rock Nine. She found that her students were able to relate better to that event in history through the use of videos, pictures, and other types of resources available outside the text. Literacy does not just involve the use of textbooks, it involves using outside sources to help you better understand the text that you are analyzing.

Sara Kajder also looks into the ways in which technology can benefit students in the book Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice. Some teachers have implemented the use of blogs in their classrooms. This allows students to express their thoughts about academic topics in a more informal way. Their peers can then read and respond or reflect upon what their classmates are saying. Another example that Kajder gives is podcasting. In this activity, technology is integrated into classroom group discussions. Students record group conversations that take place in class, and then they, along with the teacher, can go back and analyze the discussion.

Math is another subject that has greatly benefitted from the use of technology within the classroom. Math is often a difficult subject for many students to grasp. However, if we have resources that provide us with interactive means for students to practice it, we increase the likelihood of their success. Another way technology has helped the math world, is through the visual representation of complex problems. As you get into higher-level math courses, you deal with a lot of graphs and objects being represented through equations. For students (and myself!) it is very difficult to see how these letters and numbers represent a shape, but when there is a visual that goes along with it, it becomes much more clear. 

Beers, G. (n.d.). Adolescent literacy: Turning promise into practice.

Hinchman, K. A., & Sheridan-Thomas, H. K. (2008). Best practices in adolescent literacy instruction. New York: Guilford Press.