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Technology Integration: Final Reflection EDTC 600

Kristen Collins

August 9, 2014

Classroom Teacher Interview

I interviewed two classroom teachers with different perspectives on technology based on

their tenure, subject, and type of school. My first interviewee, Beth, is a 35-year teaching

veteran. She has taught middle school Spanish and French, and is currently teaching at a private

school in Maryland. My second interviewee, Dorienne, is a 3rd year teacher of 6th grade English

in a public middle school in Maryland. Because I have teachers with differing experiences, I

enjoyed listening to their responses to my questions and how their responses had some consistent

themes and some contrary views.

Both of the teachers thought that using technology in class was important to student

learning and that using technology can be a useful tool for increasing student engagement. I was

not surprised, however, that Dorienne, as the younger teacher, was more inclusive and decisive

about her technology integration. When we talked, she spoke about technology as if it should be

a requirement for use in the classroom. Expressly, Dorienne said, “[Technology] is becoming, if

not already is, an essential for everyday life.” This seems to be a reflection of many current

young teachers. Those who were raised on technology and given technology courses in their

teacher preparation courses during college or after are more open to using technology in their

classrooms.
Beth, as a more experienced teacher, talked to me about the importance of using

technology carefully and thoughtfully. Beth said, “I have been around enough to see that infusing

technology just for the sake of doing it tends to muddle the goals.” Beth makes a good point, and

is one that has been explored multiple times during the course of this class. “Technology-based

strategies offer many unique benefits to teachers as they look for instructional solutions to …

problems. Time and effort are required to plan and carry out technology-based methods,

however, and sometimes additional expense is involved as well. Teachers have to consider the

benefits of such methods compared to their current methods and decide if the benefits are worth

the additional effort and cost,” (Roblyer 2013, p55). Technology for the sake of adding it can

hinder the students’ ability to meet the objectives expressed, and using models such as the

SAMR model and Tech-PACK help us to make decisions about technology best practices by

allowing us to evaluate the usefulness of our lessons. I found that Beth was very insightful about

this, without formal training on technology integration. Beth elaborated that in order for a

technology to include in her classwork or homework for students, there had to be a functional

reason or improvement it made, because sometimes the user errors and problems that occur with

technology integration are not worth the procedure. This kind of thinking refers to Tech-PACK.

Tech-PACK is a teacher’s ability to “identify what they must learn more about in order to

implement a given technology integration strategy to best effect, (Roblyer 2013, p 53). Beth

critically considers the benefits, the procedures, and the content taught before she integrates a

new technology in her classroom.

When I asked how the teachers used technology in their classrooms they gave me varying

answers. Dorienne explained more about how she was using technology from a teacher’s

perspective. She listed programs such as PowerPoint, YouTube, Prezi, and other presentation
programs for how she presents information to the students. It seems that for the most part, the

technology integration in her classroom is teacher based, with a few word processing or

PowerPoint projects that are student based. When I approached Beth with the same question, she

told me how her students used technology. Beth shared with me that she used Google Voice and

online chat homework as a formative assessment for students’ ability to use their second

language. They call or chat in the language assigned, in such a way that is plausible for real

world use. I thought this was a great example of modification on the SAMR model due to its

improvement to other options such as worksheets. My personal experience was very similar to

Dorienne’s previous to this class. As young teachers, it is very difficult to balance technology,

curriculum, student centered learning, all along with the administrative and classroom

management side of teaching. It should be the goal of the school and community to incorporate

technology education for its teachers in order to emphasize the importance of not only using

technology, but the importance of using high quality technology and questioning its benefit to

our students. Unfortunately, in my school this past year, I faced the requirement placed upon

teachers for incorporating a new technology into our teaching and proving that we have done it.

While I know the administration is trying to expand our horizons, I believe that in order to really

get teachers to invest into a technology, they needed to find a program or website that was

expressly beneficial, as well as receiving support of technology integration, such as the SAMR

model and Tech-PACK workshops, to help guide them.

When asked about how they stay abreast of new educational technology, both Beth and

Dorienne mentioned their school and county community, as they worked with their colleagues

and shared ideas through word of mouth. Dorienne also mentioned that she has attended

workshops provided by Baltimore County Public Schools about specific technology applications.
Beth additionally gathers information through mentoring student teachers. She says that it is as

great way to learn new ideas, because the college students she works with are receiving

education in new technologies that she had not heard of. Beth also suggested online communities

on Facebook or other teaching forums, because she is able to get information from those in and

out of her specific content area. It was great to hear these suggestions from Beth, as I had not

thought about communicating with groups online for information.

The last question I asked the interviewees was what they would buy if they had funds to

put towards instructional technology. Both teachers suggested 1-to-1 devices, but Dorienne

mentioned that this is an initiative that is already in place for Baltimore County Public Schools,

and that within the next few years all of her students should have computers of their own to use

at school. Interestingly enough, Dorienne and Beth’s opinions vary from there. Dorienne

suggests that software upgrades for the student computers as well as program subscriptions to

allow student access to the best programs possible. Beth specifically suggested that if the

teachers already have smart boards, projectors and Wi-Fi, that the most important investment for

her would be relevant staff development on instructional technology. I found that I would

unquestionably agree with Beth’s assessment of the importance of education for the teachers. As

I have seen first hand, in order to be a successful technology integrator, you must have the

understanding and support necessary to make it work. If you don’t understand the importance of

the SAMR model, or the International Society for Technology Education Standards for teachers

and students, we cannot be as effective as we want all teachers to be.

Through my interviews I have learned a lot about the diversity of teachers’ standpoint on

technology. Most teachers understand that the movement toward technology integration is

inevitable, but not all teachers are given the tools to evaluate and use technology appropriately
and effectively. I believe that we need to get our school systems involvement in the education of

our faculty members on the topic of technology integration. It cannot be assumed that all

teachers possess the skills to find and implement suitable technologies for their classes. As

someone who has learned significant insight into implementing programs into my classroom this

semester, I will surely be sharing my new found knowledge with my co-workers in the coming

school year. After speaking with Beth and Dorienne, I would say that Beth has found a system to

find successful technology through trial-and-error and pure experience. Beth is selective about

using technology in her classroom, and does not use technology unless she feels it has a benefit

to the content or process of learning. She was honest and explained that she didn’t feel like she

was one of the teachers that used the most technology in her school, but seemed to be successful

when she does use it. Dorienne seems to be a typical young teacher. She understands that

technology is important to use in the classroom, but is not as successful in using technology that

substitutes or augments the lessons that are non-technology based. I hope that when I showed her

some of the tools and models I have become aware of through this class, that she will be able to

further her craft in the future. I would hope that I could find a balance between these two

teachers in my own practice. I appreciate Dorienne’s willingness and work to continually build

upon her lessons by bringing in new technologies, but I also have learned from Beth about the

need to evaluate technology integration before applying it to a lesson. As I return to school this

fall, I will be evaluating the benefits of the technology I have integrated in the past, as well as

reviewing lessons for possible enhancement in the future.

Lesson Plan Comparison

My lesson plan from this semester was based off of topics from the middle school general

music curriculum of Baltimore County Public Schools. The main object is, “Students will create
a graphic organizer in order to classify instruments using the Sachs and Hornbostel system,”

(Collins, 2014a p1). Through the lesson, students explored the instruments of Africa that they

had been introduced to in a previous lesson, and they were to explore the classification categories

of the Sachs and Hornbostel classification model. Once they had the groups set, students were to

create a way to organize the instruments using a web-based program, examtime.com. The

students would then publish their work, and defend their work against questions listed by their

peers. The two online lessons that I have found have similar objectives, however use a different

classification system, which is organizing orchestral instrument families. This works well for

western world instruments, and is used generally with younger students but because the lesson

has the same processes, they are very comparable.

Lesson 1 Overview

Instruments of the Orchestra, a lesson written by Sarah Malburg, has a similar goal of

introducing students to classifying instruments by how they make sound. Students begin by

completing a worksheet on the computer. The worksheet is a pre-assessment, allowing the

teacher to gain insight into what students already know about classifying instruments. Once the

students have completed the worksheet, the teacher presents a PowerPoint of different

instruments and how instrument families are divided. While the PowerPoint is being presented,

students use their computers and a Word Processor to take notes for the next class. The teacher

follows up by performing different instruments for the class. The assessment of this lesson is the

students ability to complete a worksheet on the computer for each instrument family after

gathering information about the instruments on a kids music website, such as

http://www.dsokids.com/2001/instrumentchart.htm.
This lesson is using a significant amount of technology. The students are using a

computer with word processing and websites for a majority of their work, and are generally

working independently. However, I am happy to see that the lesson also includes a direct in-

person performance of various instruments that allows students contact with the instruments in a

way that technology cannot provide. The lesson is similar to mine in that my lesson had an

assessment of students’ ability to correctly classify instruments. Our differences arise because I

am having students build their own organizer using a web-based technology, where this lesson

uses a teacher-created organizer that students fill in. Comparing this lesson the SAMR model. I

would say that this lesson is at the level of augmentation. The work that is completed on the

computer could very well be completed with a print out of the worksheet and information that

students find online. The improvement lies in the ability to have the website provide audio

examples of the instruments along with the text. To improve this lesson, I would use an

interactive website, such as http://listeningadventures.carnegiehall.org/ypgto/index.aspx, which

sends students’ on a safari adventure to meet all of the instrument families in the jungle. It is a

unique way to meet all the instruments, and plays like a game so the students stay engaged. This

allows students to review instruments for as long as they need individually, and gives detailed

information about each instrument and family.

Lesson 2 Overview

Let’s Meet the Symphony Orchestra! is another instrument classification lesson

developed by the Enlarged City School District of Middletown in New York. Students enter the

classroom while orchestra music is playing. After they have listened for a few minutes, the

students discuss instruments that they hear, and other details they want to share about the music.

The teacher uses a SMART Board to record the students’ input. After the introduction, the
teacher uses a SMART Board presentation to introduce the families of the orchestra, and clicking

on sound examples on each slide. While this is being presented, students take notes on a

worksheet provided to them. Once all the basic information has been presented, there are slides

in which students are asked to use the SMART Board to arrange instruments into the correct

category by dragging using the stylus. Other memory games are included to enhance students’

recollection of the instrument families.

This lesson teaches the same information as the first lesson, but does so in a significantly

different way. The students in this lesson are working generally as a class, except when they are

asked to individually come to the board to participate. This may be a good way to introduce the

information, but it doesn’t leave much individual assessment for the teacher to make sure

students have mastered the content. The interactive SMART Board lesson is an augmentation of

the basic PowerPoint of lesson one, as it seems to have functional improvements, such as taking

notes directly on the screen and allowing students to move objects in front of the class. To

improve this lesson, I would like the students to be more actively engaged once the presentation

of the instrument families has been completed. The students could use individual computers to

create a prezi using voice recording to present the orchestra family information in their own

words. As discussed in our class forum entitled “Prezi – The Thinking Student’s Powerpoint”

many of our classmates agreed that Prezi had significant functional improvements over

PowerPoint for student presentations. For example, James Baker (2014) mentions, “The

application has Google image search built in and YouTube can be embedded directly from

YouTube.” This project would be user friendly, and allow students to be creative in their

approach.
If I were to implement one of the above lessons, I would choose Lesson 2 from the

Middletown School District. The benefits of the SMART Board are more concrete and allow for

the class to participate together to understand the classification while taking notes. Even though

technology isn’t the focus of the lesson, it also doesn’t become a hindrance. I would be

concerned about the students’ ability to take notes on a computer as is mentioned in the first

lesson, and making sure that all students are engaged appropriately and completing work in the

time frame given.

Both of these lessons gave me insight into my own lesson and some problems that may

occur when I implement it. Reading through both of these lessons made me realize that my

lesson was probably going to be a little too difficult to accomplish in 2 class periods. I think it

would be best to re-align my lesson to be a 3 or 4-day project. I also felt as though my lesson was

more of a modification when I wrote it, but now I think it is an augmentation. I am satisfied with

that, but I think I would like to have students use a program more like Prezi so they could

organize instruments into families, but also include sound or video clips with each instrument. It

may also be beneficial to use Prezi because the students may be more familiar with the program

and have less difficulty using it.

It would be interesting to have students invent their own classification system to compare

to the Sachs and Hornbostel system in which they can build upon as we go through different

cultures of study. My interpretation of the importance of this lesson is for students to understand

how classification systems help us organize and understand things that affect us in the world. If

this is the end goal, using their own classification system and then evaluating it’s effectiveness

could be more applicable to the goal than the original lesson. As I have discussed in the

classroom forum entitled “Creativity in Schools”, creativity is sometimes lost in our educational
system of standardization. “It is up to the educators to find ways for students to express

themselves creatively while getting students to understand the content they are being assessed

on,” (Collins, 2014b). Deviating from the intended curriculum to meet the same goals can be

necessary when adapting to the students’ need in the classroom.

As I have learned throughout the course of this semester, I will continually re-evaluate

my lessons and technology integration to determine the effectiveness of what I am asking the

students to complete. The benefits of having tools such as Tech-Pack and the SAMR model are

infinite. I look forward to using all I have learned in this course to enhance my craft and improve

my lessons for student learning and engagement.


References

Baker, J. (2014). Prezi – The Thinking Students’ Powerpoint. Message posted to

https://learn.umuc.edu/d2l/le/22071/discussions/threads/764412/View

Collins, K. (2014a). Annotated Lesson Plan Form. Unpublished manuscript, University of

Maryland University College.

Collins, K. (2014b). Creativity in Schools. Message posted to

https://learn.umuc.edu/d2l/le/22071/discussions/threads/809786/view

Malburg, S. (2012). Instruments of the Orchestra Unit Plan and First Lesson. Bright Hub

Education. Retrieved from: http://www.brighthubeducation.com/elementary-school-

activities/20260-orchestra-lesson-plans-for-elementary-students/

NYLearns. (2012). Let’s Meet the Symphony Orchestra! by ECSDM. Retrieved from

http://www.nylearns.org/module/content/pyb/resources/14709/view.ashx

Roblyer, M. & Doering, A. (2013). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching.  Boston,
MA: Pearson.

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