Chapter 11

Clarify Key Stages in an effective demonstration that guides student learning with and about technology in various subject areas:

Demonstration: Just as we are doing in our team teaching, the teacher is to demonstrate the technology and concepts while engaging student thought process. As observers, it is helpful to inquire what the students think about what is presented and how it can be adapted. This is crucial because teacher-centered lessons and tutorials often tend to create bored, distracted, and antsy students. Labs and Hands-On Activities: As the book states, constructivists believe that labs and hands on are essential if students are to successfully use technology as a tool. Keep in mind that the teacher needs to create focused and organized labs. At the end of each lab, it is very important to discuss how the students felt about using technology as a tool and what can be changed or improved. Questioning: This part is pretty self explanatory; start by asking simple questions and end with the higher-level ones. Grouping: Grouping, although I am not a huge fan of group-learning (usually one person ends up doing all the work), it is another way to teach technology as a useful tool to students. Some students often work better in groups because they have their peers to explain techniques and situations in more relatable terms. All of these strategies are useful; testing each one is the only way to figure out which method(s) are most useful for your adaptation.

I guess I really don't have any questions or qualms about this section because it is pretty straight forward. At the level I will be teaching, students are going to already know how to type and do basic word functions. These techniques are great if you are introducing a new technology; I guess I would apply them to free software or something like that which would be useful in an English classroom.

As a student, I was pretty tech-savvy; It was often me who told my English teacher how to do certain things on Word and other programs. I taught her to use the Grab program in order to take snapshots for step by step instructions, which made tricky applications of Word seemingly painless. Other than that, I don't really call learning a whole lot of new styles of technology in most of my classes.