What Is a Digital Classroom?

It sounds cutting edge, and cutting edge is always better, right?

The high technology that has slowly been introduced into American classrooms may be the beginning of a revolution in teaching and learning, but only if teachers harness and couple it with effective teaching practices.

At the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, researchers have identified nine instructional strategies that consistently affect improved student performance. They are:

1. idenitifying similarities and differences
2. summarizing and note-taking
3. reinforcing effort and providing recognition
4. homework and practice
5. non-linguistic representation
6. coopertive learning
7. setting objectives and providing feedback
8. generating and testing hypotheses
9. cues, questions, and advance organizers

These strategies (maybe "tactics" is a more appropriate term) are simple, and none necessitate high technology. But technologies, particularly interactive ones, give teachers more options to implement them.

Describing how in detail would fill volumes. But each of these strategies can be implemented using basic technology, and even limited understanding of the technology can let teachers do their jobs more efficiently.

For example, at my high school, we use a Google Form to quickly identify those students who haven't done their homework so that the appropriate administrator can ensure that they report to Homework Center-- an opportunity to get the support they need as well as an important accountability tool.

More intriguing are those technologies that facilitate new paths to learning: perhaps the displacement of the textbook, variations on the traditional teacher lectures, and a change in the routines that haven't changed fundamentally in nearly a century.

What does it mean to you to "digitize" your classroom?

Welcome to TEC!

Here we go again with another section of TEC 600. Every semester seems more exciting than the previous, probably for several reasons, foremost among them is that it's been over a year since I've taught this, so I'm eager to see what new insights and skills my students will bring.

On that note, this survey will help me find out:

Click Here to take survey

Another reason that this class may be more exciting is that technology continues to advance in significant ways, and the possibilities that many technologies portend for our classrooms are intriguing.

The principles are the same as they were a year ago, but what were previoulsy emerging technology and trends are now ubiquitous. Take this blog, for instance. Just five years ago, Blogger was a relative newcomer in the world of the web, and only recently acquired by Google. There were around 50 million blogs already, but today that number has tripled. In the last 24 hours, another million posts were published in the blogosphere.

Finally, as this technology permeates more aspects of our lives, the way we think, create, interact, and operate changes. A few ideas about how:

1. People think more quickly. Before the digital age, people thought more deliberately. Compared to what it took me to to type this sentence, it would have taken much more forethought to compose the same sentence by hand or typewriter. We think and write more concisely these days.

2. People are often less inclined to make face-to-face connections. In the era of Facebook and email, how easy is it to feel empowered to communicate behind your computer screen?

3. Folks are apt to think globally and less hierarchically. From the textbook to the hyperlink, we now see knowledge as more of a network than a linear collection of causes and effects.

How else has the digital age and its accompanying technologies affect how we think? How do those changes affect how students might learn, and how we should plan to teach them?