Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Kristen Collins
August 9, 2014
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Lesson 2 Overview
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’
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
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
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
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
https://learn.umuc.edu/d2l/le/22071/discussions/threads/764412/View
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
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.