Technology+Issues+in+Education+(RP)

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 * Technology Issues in Education**

=Using Technology to Support HOTS= Technology is a key tool in supporting Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). I am defining HOTS as thinking beyond what students at the average level think about, going above and beyond the norm. The internet can do that in an infinite amount of ways, it's being added to every day. I think that "25 Awesome Virtual Learning Experiences Online" is a great tool for supporting HOTS. One website that they suggest is google earth. i have played around with google maps before, but google earth is so much cooler! I recently switched my major to history, and as a history teacher google earth would be of great use to me. I could create tours of historical landmarks and how they have changed over time. i can mark important places on the map. i think the only thing google earth can't do is find penguins in antarctica (i tried. no such penguins were found). to encorporate HOTS i would have students research a historical area (i'm not sure how old it would be because google earth only goes back so far, ie they don't have satellite pictures of ancient mesopotamia) and then create a tour over time. for example, i would give them a topic like the transformation of Gaul to France, and have them search near the French- Luxembourge border, and find Gaulish landmarks, and make a tour for each of the major time changes in France to Modern Day. By doing this activity, the students would be developing HOTS because they are thinking in 3 dimensions: time, place, and then change over time instead of just time and place. by doing this activity students would also be learning about other cultures, aka being diverse. I also liked the [|Virtual Journey Into The Universe]. If anything can get students to think about "The Big Picture" and think about things bigger than themselves and develop higher order thinking skills, the universe is one of those things. This website lets students explore our solar system; including the sun, the 9 planets (they include Pluto), and any satellites or moons a planet has. =Using Technology to Affirm Diversity= Technology is a huge tool when it comes to promoting diversity. With the World Wide Web, teachers can access webpages in different languages from different countries and cultures all without getting up from their desks. In a french class, the teacher could pull up french news websites to educate their class on current events in France. A history teacher could do something similar, and they could also use websites made about historical events and people. Just about every single subject can use technology to affirm diversity. For example, when I was in 10th grade, my English class read The Crucible, a true story of witchcraft trials in a puritan village in the 1600's, and we had to write a paper on it, encorporating websites. the use of the internet provided us with access to many different websites about puritans, a culture in which a lot of us were unfamilliar with. Here at CMU, my French partner and i found web pages in French about the debate in france about islamic women wearing burkas in public using the world wide web. In this instance the internet provided 4 different types of diversity: another language, another culture, a look at foreign politics, and comparison of a culture found in america (in america, there really isn't a legal debate about banning the burka). =Using Technology to Support All Learners= Assistive Technology can help almost all students. For example, when i was in first grade, i couldn't hold my pencil correctly, so my teacher bought me a squishy purple pencil gripper, and that helped with my writing ability immensely. As for helping other students with special needs, it all depends on the student. today in class we watched a video about a little Korean girl who couldn't or wouldn't speak (it was never distinguished) and she had a little computer she carried around with her that had pictures on it, and when she wanted to speak she pressed a button about what she wanted to say. another child in the video had sensory motor problems, and couldn't hold a crayon correctly. he had a tool made out of rubber bands and a PVC pipe with a hole for the crayon so he could color with the rest of the students. If i had an ESL student in my classroom, i would create labels in English and in their primary language and put them all over the classroom in places like near the clock, the door, the window, the whiteboard/blackboard, the pencil sharpener, etc. When i was in 4th grade, we had a student come to us from japan, so the teacher coated the classroom in labels, so i might do that too.

Here is my powerpoint about the importance of digital textbooks in schools. (re-upload powerpoint from other page)