Resources and Ideas of Classroom Tech Integration
Portfolio
Learning Style Inventories
It often helps teachers to know what learning styles their students inhabit. Below is a list of resources that can be used to help teachers survey their students in order to better instruct and meet their needs.
- Vark: A Guide to Learning Styles This website is a research project on learning styles. Students can click “Questionnaire” on the right hand side in order to take the survey and receive their results.
- Facebook Learning Style Quiz I created this quiz for a previous class. It was posted on Facebook so others could view and use as well. I have also included a Learning Style PPT version for classroom use. This self created quiz reflects standards TEP Standard 9; NBPTS Proposition 4.
- Learning Style Inventory This short 24 question survey helps assess between Visual, Auditory, or Tactile learners
- ILS Learning Style Questionnaire This 44 question survey was created from a student at NC State University. It also comes with a 4 page handout explaining each of the learning styles you could get as a result.
- The Three Different Learning Styles This 16 question series helps students determine if they are audio, visual, or kinesthetic
Examples of Student Use of Technology Tools
Below is a list of sites I use within my classroom that displays samples of my students’ work:
- PBWorks: I use my wiki, hosted on PBWorks, to allow my students to create and maintain online portfolios. The students are allowed to choose their favorite work, upload it, and create links to it for others to see view and comment on. The paper shows a deep understanding about the events and facts surrounding the Spanish-American War. THe understanding is more on a comprehension/knowledge level, and does not go very far up the ladder of Bloom’s Taxonomy. However, the students who created this project did successfully master the standard and topic assigned to them.
- Science Experiment on Static Electricity: This is my class blog hosted by edublogs.org. Here I can post questions or host discussions to allow my students to express their own views and ideas. Often I have had students prewrite what the wanted to say in order to promote deeper thoughts and correct grammar. In this situation, the students were responding to the events of a science experiment. The responses showed they understood what happened and why it happened. A few of the responses offer extensions of the experiment, relating it to rubbing socks on carpet.
- Podomatic: This website hosts podcasts and allow them to be streamed to the iTunes software. My class has created podcasts that were chosen to be displayed at this years Capitol Tech Conference in Atlanta, GA. This website allows visitors to hear their creations without having to subscribe or install iTunes. The podcasts illustrate a deeper level of understanding on the topics covered past comprehension and knowledge. The students extend the subjects and also begin to relate them to real life. I believe these are some of the strongest work samples I have collected as the students obviously made it their own, which will leave a lasting impact on their studies.
- SchoolTube: This website is similar to YouTube, except that all videos must be approved upon submission. This allows for a much safer environment for students to view and share videos. I use this site to upload videos of various student work (such as plays, skits, songs, etc) so that they can share it with parents at home. Similar to the podcasts, these show a much deeper understanding on the topics covered. The students were able to take the various assignments and make it their own.
Today’s Classroom
As a class assignment we were challenged by our professor to paste an entire annotated bibliography that we had completed earlier in the semester into Wordle.net and see what came out. I found my results very intriguing! Especially when you consider the amount of focus that has been placed on the word “students” in comparison to the word “teacher”!
Annotated Bibliography
This list of journal articles illustrates researched based uses of technology within the elementary classroom. This paper also meets NBPTS Propositions 4, 5.
Jason Smith Annotated Bibliography
Unit by Design for World War II
Here is a list of resources you can use for videos relating to WWII in your classroom.
JSmith_TechTools_Resource_File
Here is the Unit you can follow that utilizes resources above as well as others to successfully teach a project based unit on World War II.
This meets TEP Standards 1, 2, 3, 10; NBPTS Propositions 1, 2, 3
Ongoing Technology Based Research
I am currently working on my Specialist Degree in Teaching and Learning with a focus on Instructional Technology. As such I am researching the use of blogs in the classroom. You can find my research below, which meets TEP Standards 8, 9; NBPTS Propositions 4, 5; ISTE Standards A, B, C.
Be sure to check out my Blog!
Be sure to click “Home” at the top of this page to be linked back to my professional teaching blog. This reflects TEP Standard 6 & 9; NBPTS Proposition 3, 4, & 5; ISTE Standards B, C.
