Screencasting—
A screencast is a video screen capture with audio narration—in other words, a digital recording of computer screen output. For example, using software, teachers can record their voice while narrating their slides or watching a video on their computer. The software will capture what is on the screen as well as the teacher’s voice and produce a video that can be shared with students.
Learning Management System (LMS)—
An LMS is an online site to exchange information, assignments, take attendance, share resources, and do assessments. Examples include Edmodo, Haiku, Schoology, Moodle, Blackboard, Google Classroom, and many others. We recommend that schools adopt one LMS and train all their teachers on that one so students don’t have to learn multiple different systems.
Universal Design for Learning—
According to the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST, 2010), universal design for learning (UDL) is a set of principles for curriculum development that gives all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone—not a single, one-size-fits-all solution, but flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs. See Chapter 3 for more details.
Whiteboarding—
This is the practice of using and sharing a whiteboard online. Just as a teacher would diagram, write notes, or draw explanations on a physical whiteboard in class, certain softwares allow people to do this online while recording their voice. These whiteboard videos can then be shared with students.
Current Research on Mobile Technology
Here we present just a few of the latest research facts regarding mobile technology. What does this mean for our students? What does it mean for the workplace they are going to be entering? Part of the reason that we believe in the implementation of mobile technology into the classroom is because of how prevalent technology is becoming in every other area of our lives. It is important to consider what this means for our students and for our teaching.
Over 50 percent of the global population has a mobile phone (Kemp, 2014).
Research has shown that daily technology integration into every class period is the most effective strategy for improving teaching and learning (Graeves, Hayes, Wilson, Gielniak, & Peterson, 2010).
By 2017, half of the world’s employers will no longer provide devices for employees; instead, employees will be expected to supply their own work device (Johnson, Adams Becker, Estrada, & Freeman, 2014).
In 2014, 56 percent of U.S. school districts had a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program in place, up 30 percent from 2013 (Johnson et al., 2014).
Students who attend schools where technology is used in courses daily have fewer discipline problems, higher attendance rates, and are more likely to attend college than students who use technology weekly, monthly, or not at all (Graeves et al., 2010).
Of the technology used in schools, 45 percent is use of mobile devices, such as laptops, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones (Graeves et al., 2010).
In 2015, 80 percent of people who access the Internet will do so from a mobile device (Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, & Haywood, 2011).
During 2014, American K–12 schools spent an estimated $9.94 billion on educational technology, an increase of 2.5 percent over the previous year, according to Joseph Morris, director of market intelligence at the Center for Digital Education website (http://www.centerdigitaled.com/) (Murphy, 2014).
Reflection Questions
What does this mean for your school district? Your school? Your classroom?
How will this impact the students in your classroom after they enter the workplace?
Research Reports
If you are interested in reading more about integrating technology into the classroom, or if you are trying to convince your administration that technology integration is important, the following research reports are interesting, insightful, and important to read. Visit our companion website (http://resources.corwin.com/lastbackpack) for live links and other recent reports.
Sloan Consortium (2015): Taking the Test: Tracking Online Education in the United States (www.onlinelearningconsortium.org/read/survey-reports/)
Project Tomorrow (2014): Making Learning Mobile 1.0: Leveraging Mobile Devices to Transform Teaching and Learning (www.tomorrow.org/publications/MobileDevicesTransformTeaching.html)
Cisco (2014): The Global Information Technology Report, 2014 (www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalInformationTechnology_Report_2014.pdf)
Horizon Foundation (2014): The NMC Horizon Report: K–12 Edition (www.nmc.org/horizon-project/horizon-reports/horizon-report-k-12-edition)
Project Red (2010): The Technology Factor: Nine Keys to Student Achievement and Cost-Effectiveness (www.schooldata.com/pdfs/ProjectRED_TheTechnolgyFactor_Intro.pdf)
U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology: Powered by Technology Reports (www.tech.ed.gov)
Innosight Institute (2012): Classifying K–12 Blended Learning (www.christenseninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Classifying-K-12-blended-learning.pdf)
Chapter 1 The Basics of Teaching With Technology
Classroom Management Strategies
The 5 Percent Rule
This may sound harsh, but I promise we mean it in the gentlest way possible: Regardless of age, gender, occupation, socioeconomic status, or education level, one of the things we have learned from speaking to teachers and audiences around the world is that 5 percent of any audience is crazy. And they are going to break the rules. However, we often punish 95 percent of our students from really engaging in learning opportunities because we are so concerned the 5 percent are going to misbehave or do something inappropriate. We must stop doing this in education.
When a student says a curse word, we don’t cut out everyone’s tongue. When two students get in a fight, we don’t suspend everyone from school. Policies like that would