Running Head: INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY AND MEDIA RESOURCES

Integration of Technology and Media Resources

Riley “Caden” Arendt

Regent University

In partial fulfillment of UED 495 Field Experience ePortfolio, Spring 2020

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Introduction

Now more than ever, technology is involving itself in education. As technology

increasingly becomes apart of everyday use, it is naturally integrating with teaching practices. I

believe this presents, both, issues for educators to address and enhancements for educators to

involve strategically and tactfully. The usage of technology must be related to the content,

helpful to furthering the students’ understanding of the content, and conducted in an orderly

fashion. The proper use of technology in the classroom and encouragement of its use at home

begins with thoughtful preparation and organization of the educator. The principles of

technology usage in the classroom are comparable to the principles of classroom usage of any

other resources used in the students’ education (such as worksheets, group activities, and

involving textbooks). However, the principles must be translated because technology can be like

learning a new language. When it comes to actual usage of technology, educators must

remember that, just like any other resource, technology has its limitations. Students have

different learning styles and learning needs. The pieces we use in our instruction must cater to

multiple learning styles and engage different senses. Activities should involve a healthy mix of

movement, social interaction, interpersonal study, visuals, and auditory learning. Technology is a

useful tool, but without careful organization, thoughtful planning, and intentional usage it will

not reach the needs of our students.

Rationale of Artifacts

The first artifact I chose to display is a Google Slides presentation I created for a Social

Studies unit. The slides contained engaging pictures for my visual learners, sound clips or videos

for my auditory learners, and organized information for students to take notes from. On many

slides, I organized the information in a manner that demonstrates good note-taking strategies.
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After each lesson, I had slides with recap questions. Students would stand up and form different

shapes with their arms to indicate their answers. I also included slides with discussion questions

that promoted social learning. In this way, my slides were not merely facts for students to

memorize but cues for engaging instruction that I, as the teacher, used as a tool to help my

students reach deeper levels of understanding.

The second artifact I chose is a Google Form used as an online quiz for my students. In

my student teaching experience, my school had multiple asynchronous learning days every

month in which students worked from home. This challenged me to find ways to continue

learning activities while the students were at home (the students were given Chromebooks by the

school so I knew they would all have devices to use). I focused my synchronous learning days

towards instruction and my asynchronous learning days towards assessment. The attached quiz is

one example of an assessment used in my Social Studies unit on the Civil War. Google Forms

then organized the responses and self-graded them so I could see common themes in how my

students answered the questions. This assisted me in analyzing what concepts needed to be

clarified on the next synchronous learning day. The self-grading feature also enabled me to

spend more time lesson planning rather than grading assessments.

Reflection of Practice

While my artifacts, themselves, do not emphasize how I organized technology resources,

it is important to note the organization of these technology resources because what I learned

from my student teaching experience is that proper usage of technology begins with

organization. Like many actions in the classroom, the way students use their technology mimics

how the teacher uses his/her technology. Suzuki Shin’ichi refers to this as the “mother-tongue.”

The idea that students learn much of their knowledge subconsciously from modeling (Shin’ichi,
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2015). If a teacher leaves papers cluttered on his/her desk, the students will likely do the same.

Likewise, if a teacher does not organize their technology resources, students will likely not learn

important lessons of how to manage their technology. Organization of technology resources

(which includes devices, links, PDFs, and other files) is important for the same obvious reasons

of keeping other resources organized: avoidance of misplacing items, the ability to access items

easily and timely, promotes a more efficient work environment, etc. The included artifacts

involve Google resources as do most of my technology resources. This is because I can

efficiently store all my resources in Google Drive in the same format. Google Drive allows me to

ably share my resources with students or other teachers, assists my organization of resources,

access my resources from anywhere as well as my students to “learn from anywhere

(Sadvakassova, 2017), and partners well with Schoology (the school districts online learning

center). The organization of these resources in my student teaching experience allowed me to use

them most efficiently and effectively.

It is important to note that I did not have full lessons led by technology. Instead, I used

technology in a way that enhanced my instruction instead of being my instruction. In our day and

age, technology can make things easier and quicker, and can make us lazier and less involved. It

can have the same effect in the classroom. This is an issue that educators must address when

integrating technology in the classroom. My student teaching experience taught me the

importance of being fully involved in the organization, creation, and instruction of my lessons.

Lessons that I was more involved in were lessons my students wanted to be involved in. But the

moments I played a video while I planned for the next lesson led to my students tuning out and

working on their own things as well (like drawing, origami, or acting out). Technology comes
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with many benefits and equal challenges. Educators must model proper usage for the students to

follow.
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References

Sadvakassova, A., Serik, M., & Kultan, J. (2017). Using cloud technologies as a tool in

organizing the education process. Prague: Central Bohemia University.

doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.regent.edu/10.12955/cbup.v5.1028

Shin’ichi, S., Selden, K., & Selden, L. (2015). Selections from nurtured by love. review of

Japanese culture and society 27, 210-219. doi:10.1353/roj.2015.0008.

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Artifact 1: Google Slides for A New Nation Unit

Exemplar Slides:

Full Google Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jSxmE2j0X9SuLF0oguI-

1elJAw1nPnSeqZEQHJ8w-VM/copy
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Artifact 2: Google Form Quiz for Civil War Unit

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Quiz can be accessed at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1VNgVEARRA_lnivJ0tK9-IgFnHSjA_Mv0nNDaUzZkEzw/copy