TEACHING EFFECTIVELY WITH TECHNOLOGY

Why use Technology in Teaching?

Technology in teaching in the realm of education refers to the meaningful implementation of technology in
educational settings to achieve learning goals.

There are countless reasons why technology is a key aspect of learning in the schools. Whether we like it or
not, technology is everywhere; and in order for our students to survive in post-secondary education and the
business world, they must know technology.

The current health crisis also calls for the use of technology as a tool for distance learning
To narrow it down, we came up with 10 reasons for the importance of technology in education:

1. Students demand it.

Students are engaging with technology constantly outside of the classroom. Kids like to be interactive, and
learning through technology has now become a part of their lifestyle.

2. New teachers are demanding it. 

The technology movement has been implemented in post-secondary education as well as other professional
jobs. For new teachers, technology is considered a necessity for the learning environment.

3. Kids are the digital native.

Kids know technology better than most adults. It has become the easiest way they learn, because it is such an
integral part of their life. Engaging with technology in the classroom has not only helped them learn better,
but they also acquire multi-tasking skills. At this day in age, they hardly know how to learn without it. This
knowledge is important, because they would be way behind in the real world without it.

4. Kids can learn at their own pace.

We know from years of experience that kids learn at their own pace, but sometimes the traditional classroom
makes it difficult to do so. With the integration of technology in education, children have the ability to slow
down and go back over lessons and concepts, and more advanced kids can go ahead. It also frees up the
teacher to help kids on a more one-on-one level.

5. With technology, there are no limitations. 

Having access to other information outside of the book gives students many different ways to learn a concept.
Teachers can come up with creative ways to teach their students that keeps them engaged. Technology has
changed the learning environment so that learning is more hands-on. Schools throughout the nation are
diverse in income, and often kids don’t always get the resources they need. The implementation of technology
in schools helps close that gap.

6. Technology has the ability to enhance relationships between teachers and students.
When teachers effectively integrate technology into subject areas, teachers grow into roles of adviser, content
expert, and coach. Technology helps make teaching and learning more meaningful and fun. Students are also
able to collaborate with their own classmates through technological applications.
 COMMON LEARNING THEORIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE IN LEARNING

Learning Theories

Ever since there have been educators trying to teach students, there have been theories that guide how those
educators view the process of learning. These learning theories encompass our beliefs about the nature of
knowledge and how a person learns.

Debates surrounding learning theories have existed for millennia, and even in the modern world, there is great
diversity in how scientists, psychologists, and educators view learning. Some of the major learning theories
that shape modern conversations surrounding technology integration include behaviorism, cognitivism,
constructivism, constructionism, and connectivism. Each of these theories has been studied and written about
at length, and it is impossible to devote sufficient time and attention to each theory in the limited space
provided in this chapter. Rather, all educators should study competing learning theories and develop their
own understanding of how people learn. In this chapter, we will merely provide an extremely high level
overview of each of these theories, what each entails, and what each might mean for teaching and learning
with technology.

BEHAVIORISM was popularized in the mid-20th century as psychologists studied behavior patterns and
response systems in humans and other animals. Behaviorism treats learning as a response to stimulus. That is,
humans and other animals are trained to respond in certain ways to certain stimuli, such as salivating when a
dinner bell rings or repeating a memorized fact to receive some external reward. Teaching and learning, then,
is a process of conditioning students to properly react to stimuli, and technology can help facilitate this
training by providing incentives to learning, such as games or other rewards, or by providing systems to
efficiently develop stimulus-response conditioning, such as drill-and-kill practices.

COGNITIVISM arose as an alternative to behaviorism in part because behaviorism treated the processes of the
brain as an imperceptible black box, wherein understanding how the brain worked was not considered
important for helping people learn. Cognitivism, therefore, dealt with brain functions and how information is
processed, stored, retrieved, and applied. By treating humans as thinking machines, rather than as animals to
be trained, research in cognitivism for teaching and learning focused on helping people develop efficient
teaching and studying strategies that would allow their brains to make meaningful use of presented
information. Through this lens, technology can help in providing information and study resources that assist
the brain in efficiently storing and retrieving information, such as through the use of mnemonic devices or
multiple modalities (e.g., video, audio).

However, both behaviorism and cognitivism tended to treat learning the same for all humans, despite their
age, culture, or personal experiences. Recognizing that these factors might influence how learning
occurs, constructivism arose as a means for understanding how individual and social factors might influence
the process of learning for different groups of people and individuals.
CONSTRUCTIVISM holds that learning is constructed by learners on top of previous experience, attitudes, and
beliefs. This means that for learning to occur, new learning experiences must take into consideration these
human factors and assist the individual in assimilating new knowledge to their existing knowledge constructs.
Thus, if you are teaching students about fractions, you must teach them using language that they will
understand and connect their learning to experiences in their own lives that will have meaning for them.
Technology can help the constructivist learning process by making abstract concepts and facts more grounded
in personal experiences and the values of learners and also by allowing the learning experience to be
differentiated for individual learners (e.g., through personalized developmentally-appropriate software).
Even with these competing theories, some still believed that learning experiences and processes as they
actually exist in the real world were not fully represented, and this has become especially obvious now that
we live in a society that is heavily networked and connected via electronic and social media. All traditional
views about learning had placed knowledge and learning squarely in the mind or body of the student, but
modern technologies in particular lead us to consider whether all memory, information processing, and other
aspects of learning traditionally ascribed to the mind might not also be distributed with external
devices. CONNECTIVISM holds that the process and goals of learning in a highly networked and connected
world is different than learning in the predigital world, because learners are now persistently connected to
information sources and other resources through their electronic devices, such as smartphones or laptops.
From the connectivist perspective, learning need not be isolated to the mind, but becoming a learned and
capable citizen in a digital society requires learners to become connected with one another in such a way that
they can make use of the network as an extension of their own mind and body. Thus from a connectivist
perspective, the goal of education is to more fully and efficiently connect learners with one another and with
information resources in a manner that is persistent and in which learners can make ongoing use of the
network to solve problems. From this perspective, technology can be used to improve learning experiences by
more fully connecting students with one another and information resources in a persistent manner.

FRAMEWORKS/MODELS IN INTEGRATING ICT IN TEACHING

Why use Technology in Teaching?

TPACK is the most commonly used

technology integration model amongst educational researchers. The goal of TPACK is to provide educators
with a framework that is useful for understanding technology's role in the educational process. At its heart,
TPACK holds that educators deal with three types of core knowledge on a daily basis: technological
knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and content knowledge. Content knowledge is knowledge of one's
content area such as science, math, or social studies. Pedagogical knowledge is knowledge of how to teach.
And technological knowledge is knowledge of how to use technology tools.
These core knowledge domains, however, interact with and build on each other in important and complicated
ways. For instance, if you are going to teach kindergarten mathematics, you must both understand
mathematics (i.e. content knowledge) and how to teach (i.e. pedagogical knowledge), but you must also
understand the relationship between pedagogy and the content area. That is you must understand how to
teach mathematics, which is very different from teaching other subject areas, because the pedagogical
strategies you use to teach mathematics will be specific to that content domain. When we merge content
knowledge and pedagogical knowledge together, a hybrid domain emerges called pedagogical content
knowledge. Pedagogical content knowledge includes knowledge about content and pedagogy, but it also
includes the specific knowledge necessary to teach the specified content in a meaningful way.
SAMR

SAMR model, popularized by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, supports and enables teachers to design, develop,
and infuse digital learning experiences that utilize technology. The goal is to transform learning experiences so
they result in higher levels of achievement for students.
Ruben Puentedura: The goal for the teacher is to construct a simple SAMR ladder that is coupled to Bloom’s
Revised Taxonomy — i.e., as the task moves from lower to upper levels of the taxonomy, it also moves from
lower to upper levels of SAMR. The two Enhancement levels of SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation) are
associated with the three lower levels of Bloom (Remember, Understand, Apply), while the two
Transformation levels of SAMR (Modification, Redefinition) are associated with the upper levels of Bloom
(Analyze, Evaluate, Create). . In turn, within each grouping a similar ordering occurs — e.g., Remember-type
tasks are primarily associated with S-level uses of the technology, Understand-type tasks are associated with
either S- or A-level uses of the technology, and so on. The following diagram illustrates this association:
The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition Model shows how to progress through teaching and
learning with technology. Ideally, the last stage (Redefinition) is the ultimate aim of effective teaching and
learning with technology: this is the moment where technology is irreplaceable, the moment where brand
new possibilities and tasks open for teachers and learners.

RAT

RAT seems to be a simpler and even more practical version of the SAMR model, a less complicated way of
looking at how ICT can be integrated into a classroom context. Again, the ultimate aim is the REPLACEMENT
stage. Compared to the SAMR model, it avoids the ambiguity connected with the difference between the
second and third level; here the two levels are put together into one AMPLIFICATION stage.
There are numerous practical examples of different applications’ use at different stages of both SAMR and RAT
models. Teachers should remember, however, that knowledge of technology is just one of the three basic
elements needed for effective ICT implementation: only the complex interaction of Content (CK), Pedagogy
(PK), and Technology (TK), explained in the TPACK framework will allow successful integration technology into
teaching.

A GOOD MODEL FOR TEACHING TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

Kuhn (2013) argued for a structure to model adoption, with core characteristics identifying certain theoretical
models as superior. These characteristics vary somewhat by field and context of application; theoretical
models in this field serve different purposes than do models in the hard sciences, and teacher educators will
utilize models differently than will educational researchers or technologists (Gibbons & Bunderson, 2005).
Kimmons and Hall (2016a) said, “Determinations of [a model’s] value are not purely arbitrary but are rather
based in structured value systems representing the beliefs, needs, desires, and intents of adoptees” in a
particular context (p. 55). Six criteria have been proposed for determining quality of teacher education
technology integration models: (a) clarity, (b) compatibility, (c) student focus, (d) fruitfulness, (e) technology
role, and (f) scope (see Table 1).

SIX CRITERIA AND GUIDING QUESTIONS FOR EVALUATING TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION MODELS FOR
STUDENT TEACHERS

DIFFICULTIES USING PROMINENT MODELS IN TEACHER EDUCATION

Clarity. Many technology integration models are unclear for teachers, being overly theoretical, deceptive,
unintuitive, or confusing. For instance, SAMR, TIM, and TPACK provide a variety of levels (classifications) of
integration but may not clearly define them or distinguish them from other levels. Student teachers, thus, may
have difficulty understanding them or may artificially classify practices in inaccurate or useless ways. Most
models include specific concepts that may be difficult for teachers to comprehend (e.g., the bulls eye area in
TPACK, relative advantage in TIP, substitution vs. augmentation in SAMR, or transformation in TIM and RAT),
leading to superficial understanding of complex issues or to unsophisticated rationales for relatively shallow
technology use.
Recognizing the contextual complexities of technology integration, Mishra and Koehler (2007) argued that
every instance of integration is a “wicked problem.” Although this characterization may be accurate, teachers
need models to guide them in grappling clearly and intuitively with such complexities.
Compatibility. Models we consider incompatible for K–12 teachers emphasize constructs that are impractical
or not central to a teacher’s daily needs. TAM, for instance, focuses entirely on user perceptions influencing
adoption, with little application for developing lesson plans, guiding student learning, or managing classroom
behaviors. Even models developed for educators may focus on activities incompatible with teacher needs
(e.g., student activism in LoTi) or be too theoretical to apply directly to teacher practice (e.g., technological
content knowledge in TPACK).
Fruitfulness. Models that lack fruitfulness do not lead teachers to meaningful reflection, but rather yield
unmeaningful evaluations of practice. Models with multiple levels of integration, such as LoTi, SAMR, and TIM,
need a purpose for classifying practice at each level; teachers must understand why classifying practice
as augmentation versus modification (SAMR) or as awareness versus exploration (LoTi) is meaningful. SAMR
has four levels of integration, LoTi has six, and TIM has 25 across two axes (5×5). For teachers, too many
possibilities, particularly if nonhierarchical, can make a model confusing and cumbersome if the goal in their
context is to help them quickly reflect on their practice and improve as needed.
Technology role. Some models are technocentric: focused on technology use as the goal rather than as a
means to an educational result. TAM, for instance, particularly focuses only on technology adoption, not on
improving teaching and learning. Other models may focus on improving practice but be largely
technodeterministic in their view of technology as improving practice rather than creating a space for effective
pedagogies to emerge.
Scope. Models with poor scope do not balance effectively between comprehensiveness and parsimony, being
either too directive or too broad for meaningful application. TIP, for instance, is overly directive, simulating an
instructional design approach to creating TPACK-based lesson plans but too narrowly focused to go beyond
this. In contrast, the much broader TPACK provides teachers with a conceptual framework for synchronizing
component parts but without concrete guidance on putting it into practice. To be useful, models should ignore
aspects of technology integration not readily applicable for teachers, but provide sufficient
comprehensiveness to guide practice.
Student focus. Most models of technology integration do not meaningfully focus on students, focusing on
technology-adoption or teacher-pedagogy goals rather than clarity on what students do or learn. Models may
merely assume student presence with pedagogical considerations, but failure to consider students at the
center of practitioner models prevents alignment with student-focused practitioners’ needs.