Paul Provence

September 30
th
, 2014
Dr. Whitaker
Digital Learning in the Classroom

Week of September 23
rd
30
th

Question 1: What did you learn most from Chapter 4?
Chapter 4 discusses ways that teachers can use technology to allow students to navigate new material. Specifically, the
chapter focuses on giving students cues to guide their learning, questions to help students analyze material and make
inferences and organizers that students can use to capture their prior knowledge or arrange new knowledge in helpful
ways.
One of the greatest strengths of technology (both in education and in other areas) is its ability to allow people to quickly
and efficiently organize information, make connections between pieces of information, and represent information in
multiple ways. These aspects of technology make it especially helpful in education settings, which are dedicated to
helping learners do just these things: engage with, organize, and represent information.
Chapter 4 demonstrated multiple apps and websites that could be used to create different types of organizational and
connective models. The power of this is that it allows teachers to tailor their learning environments to different students
needs, or even to give ownership of the learning to students so that they are able to adapt and modify class structures
themselves.
From a teacher perspective, this is especially helpful as it effectively reduces the amount of time that teachers might need
to spend creating additional instructional resources for students with different needs to a fraction of the time a teacher
without access to these technologies might spend. This reduction in time spent creating resources could then be
profitably allocated in pursuit of other areas of teaching (one-on-one tutoring, culture building, etc)
Question 2: How can nonlinguistic representations help ELL (English Language Learners)
In discussions of teaching English Language Learners, a strong tension exists between a focus on acquiring language
skills (various models exist for describing the levels of English proficiency and what they mean for an ELL) and the need
to learn the specific content of various courses. In addition, one of the foundational ideas of 2
nd
Language Acquisition,
known as meaning support, requires that, as students engage with the target language, that various other modalities
are present, in order to provide clues and reminders of the meaning attached to the words in the target language. This
could be anything from gestures linked to certain words (kinesthetic learning) to pictures and videos/audio clips
(auditory/visual learning).
Using non-linguistic representations as a tool to support ELLs can be helpful for a number of reasons. First, it may allow
students who are strong in content but struggle to express themselves in English the ability to show their knowledge in
ways that are less limited by their English-language proficiency. Second, using non-linguistic representations will provide
meaning support to ELLs as they navigate content, thus giving students clues and hints as to the meanings of words
(context). Finally, for students who struggle with both the English language and with content, non-linguistic
representations may provide a lessoning of the tension between language acquisition and content mastery in favor of the
content mastery side of the spectrum, reducing the burden on these students as they work to acquire content knowledge.


Examples might include:
1. Adding pictures to an anatomy lesson or providing an interactive web-game that allows students to follow the
process of digestion
2. Creating a video of a scene from a novel and narrating the words of the novel as the action unfolds on screen
and allowing students to access this at home (flipped class) so that they are able to learn at their own pace
Question 3: How can technology be used for note taking and what are the advantages over writing?
Using technology to for note-taking is extremely advantageous in comparison to hand writing notes for several key
reasons. First, notes created with technology are instantly preserved (as long as you back up your files!) and shareable
with an infinite number of people. Second, technology provides standardized templates and tools, so handwriting and
drawing ability become negligible. Third, technology allows for multiple ways to arrange space in notes (tables, pages,
circles, squares, etc) that can be immediately created (in perfect proportions) in order affect the way that the notes are
connected. As an aside, I always take notes electronically, so Im a big proponent of this method.
After viewing Mark Burnett's discussion what do you think are the implications for using some of the resources he
mentioned as a teacher?
Mark Burnett mentioned four specific resources in his video presentation through Google hangouts:
1. Creating videos using youtube in order to flip classrooms
2. Creating rubrics using Rubistar
3. Professional Learning Networks with Twitter
4. iPad resources and Apps
I believe that the implications for using these tools are similar to the implications discussed above. Technology provides
educators with increasingly efficient ways to perform the same or similar tasks as teachers have always attempted to
perform. Flipped classrooms and videos allow students to set the pace of their learning through bypassing the teacher as
the only source of pacing and information. Rubric creation and the various iPad Apps represent a lessening in the amount
of time that teachers might need to spend creating resources. Communication technologies, such as twitter, allow for
faster communication that reaches larger numbers of people.
Returning to the idea of what makes effective teaching, these tools would all allow a competent teacher to more
profitably allocate their time and energy. However, a teacher who does not understand the foundational ideas of
teaching would not achieve master-teacher status simply as a result of access to these technologies.