Lask Week of 525

As we finish up a month and a half of integrating technology into our curriculums, the culminating piece was our final project.  I enjoyed preparing our final PowerPoint presentation (my lesson was Solving One and Two Step equations), as it gave me a chance to really analyze one of my lessons, scrutinizing its lack of technology.  Once I examined my lesson, it was apparrent to me that there were several adaptations I could make to improve it.  By adding manipulatives, a student response system, and group work, I feel I'm giving my students a much better opprotunity to grasp the content.  Upon completing my project, I had improved on several strategies, including but not limited to Providing Feedback, Nonlinguistic Representation, and Cooperative Learning.

These aforementioned strategies are just a few of the strategies that "Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works," discusses at length.  If used properly, these strategies certainly could improve engagement and achievement.  Cooperative Learning is a great way to increase student engagement, as any time students get to interact with one another, the interest level will probably be at its highest.  Also, Nonlinguistic Representation helps the students stay engaged, being able to work with the content in a way that is different than traditional means (visuals, manipulatives, etc.).  The rest of the strategies do a good job of addressing student achievement.  From notetaking skills to providing recognition for effort, these strategies not only increase standard achievement, but also technology based activities.  The strategy that stood out the most to me was Reinforcing Effort.

Reinforcing Effort essentially states that where there are several factors that may contribute to a person's success; reinforcing effort is the only one that a student has absolute control over.  As I am a math teacher, reinforcing effort is a large part of my daily struggle with students who "don't get it," or "find it confusing."  I found it particularly interesting how one teacher had students rate their own effort, and then showed the correlation between increased effort and success.  This is something that I may "steal" for my own classroom, attempting to debunk the myth of math being something that you either "know or don't know."

I believe that this class was very beneficial to aiding my classroom instruction.  Not only were there great suggestions for incorporating technology, but the textbook offered a great directional text for applying their applications.  Thank you for an informative class Ms. Diener!