Kim Hayward - School Library Media Portfolio Reflection 3.

3.3 Information technology

Candidates demonstrate their ability to design and adapt relevant learning experiences that engage
students in authentic learning through the use of digital tools and resources. Candidates model and
facilitate the effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use
information resources to support research, learning, creating, and communicating in a digital society.
Artifacts
ISTC 541 Foundations of Instructional Technology
The capstone project in Foundations of Instructional Technology was designed as a technology integrated
lesson to provide students with a relevant learning experience by using digital tools and resources. This
lesson provided students with a way to understand the job of a cartographer by creating their own map.
ISTC 789 Practicum & Portfolio in School Library Media
The research unit that I am collaboratively developing for the practicum involves using the PebbleGo
database for student research. This database is designed for young students who are just learning how to
use a database to find information. Students will use the database and print non-fiction text to create a
note sheet on a research topic, share their information, cite their sources, and evaluate their work.
Relevance
The artifacts included in this reflection represent examples of the way that learning experiences were
designed and adapted to teach relevant ways to use current digital tools and resources. These resources
enable students, and teachers, to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information to create authentic learning
experiences.
The ISTC 541 integrated technology lesson is relevant to the informational technology standard because
it created an opportunity for students to learn and use presentation tools to demonstrate their
understanding of physical features and to be able to create a map using those features. Students
progressed from basic technology such as power point, where they worked in pairs to categorize physical
geography terms, to creating a Prezi in a group to define the terms and find graphic representations of
them, to creating a physical map on Glogster using the terms and graphics. The digital tools allowed for
students to create and share knowledge in a meaningful way while learning about the job of a
cartographer, which is a social studies goal.
The ISTC 789 research lesson is relevant to the information technology standard because students will
use the PebbleGo database to locate information about their assigned research topic. In addition, they
will analyze the information they find for relevance to their topic, evaluate whether it is useful and
compile the information into a note-taking organizer that they will share with the class.
Analysis
The integrated technology lesson was not used due to technology constraints at the middle school. In the
future, this lesson would be taught using the tablets available to the classroom, as well as computer labs.
At this time, Harford County is also planning to roll out a BYOD initiative that would alleviate some of
the access issues that were found when planning to use this lesson. In addition, I would integrate some

additional digital resources such as google maps, and databases of maps of the United States. Since the
creation of this lesson, many more Web 2.0 tools have been created that could either be integrated into the
current lesson or replace certain aspects of it, such as the power point and maybe the Prezi. Students are
using digital tools in their daily lives; therefore, I could also differentiate the lesson by asking them to
choose a research or presentation tool to use for the project.
The research lesson has just been introduced. The lesson should allow for students of different abilities to
access the research information. PebbleGo not only has the text on the computer, it reads it as well. This
will allow students who are still non-readers to locate and analyze the information in order to complete
their research. This website has many different subjects that students can use for research and may be
used frequently for different projects.