Guiding Principles for Classroom Technology Use

When thinking about the forms of technology I have used in my own classroom, and how I have decided what types of technology-based methods and assignments to incorporate into my lesson planning and teaching, I find much of what I have used falls into three basic categories:

1. Does it help students apply science to daily life?
Activities that encourage students to use the web to find, for example, the pros/cons (and the factual information to back both) regarding the application of new technology are used to help students to think critically about how science affects their lives and their world.

2. Does it offer an alternative learning experience we can't do without the technology?
Offering access to virtual labs that allow my students to "see" and "manipulate" atoms and molecules, change the temperature or pressure of a gas, and numerous other activities that would not be safe or possible in the average ninth grade classroom as supplements to actual hands on labs are activities I frequently use to cover the less hands-on-friendly physical science concepts.

3. Am I doing old things in old ways? Using a projector/white board to show notes and demonstrations, using laptops in place of encyclopedias and newspapers, and using laptops for word processing are ways that I use technology weekly and even daily, but when the resources are available, why not use them?

Upon further thought, when I consider the first two categories, applying science to daily life and offering alternative learning experiences, these act as my guiding principles, as I feel both improve student learning. These are the activities I really think about and ask myself what their benefit is prior to incorporating them into a lesson.

The last category, doing old things in old ways, just shows that the use of technology (perhaps simply because it is there) can make the process of delivery smoother, simpler, but perhaps without a huge benefit to the learner. These activities, I utilize not so much for the sake of incorporating technology, but for the sake of getting the information across...not completely different from using a text message rather than a direct phone call...... same information, slightly different form of delivery.

This process of sorting through the forms of technology I have used and my guiding principles for doing so puts the focus not so much on the technology itself, but back on student learning- How does the use of this technology improve student learning? That's my one true guiding principle after all.