As educators, our goal is student
learning /achievement. We aim to create life
long learners. Technology is one tool to use
to achieve these goals. Too often, technology
is "just used" in schools. The term "integrating" has
too often come to be translated into classroom
practices as "do something, do anything -- just use
it." The question being asked with the increased
technology budgets in schools is "what is the
added-value." In other words, "what do we have now
that we could not have had without the technology?"
The Technology and Learning Spectrum is an
instructional framework charting three broad
categories of technology uses for teaching and
learning:
1) Literacy Uses
2) Adapting Uses
3) Transforming Uses
As educators move from literacy uses to
transforming uses with students, equipment to
student ratios
need to decrease. Staff development needs
will increase. Professionals are able to use this
Learning Spectrum framework to map their learning uses, and then
intentionally organize essential indicators in ways
that will target their preferred instructional uses,
and thus target student learning and achievement
while creating life long learners.* |
