Instructional Technology: Innovation in Teaching and Learning

In the classroom, it's about exploring, experimenting, and discovering!

Instructional technology is the intentional use of technology and new pedagogies to meet teaching goals.  It is the purposeful implementation of appropriate tools, techniques, or processes that will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy. Instructional technology enhances teaching practices and improves learning outcomes.   It provides a variety of opportunities for students to express understanding through images, sound, and text.

"Good integration of technology with content knowledge changes instruction." ~ Boni Hamilton

Technology integration is when classroom teachers purposefully use technology to introduce, reinforce, extend, enrich, assess, and remediate student mastery of curricular targets.  It is an instructional choice that generally includes collaboration and deliberate planning - and always requires a classroom teacher's participation.  The teacher takes full responsibility for planning, monitoring, and assessing the lessons.  Simply, technology in the classroom allows every student to experience the transformative power of education.

Instructional technology increases student engagement and leads to the development of 21st century skills:  critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration.  It is integrated into the learning experience to promote and extend student learning on a daily basis.  

Technology Facilitates Instructional Best Practices 

• Setting objectives and providing feedback
• Generating and testing hypotheses
• Summarizing and note-taking
• Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
• Collaborating using cooperative learning structures
• Creating nonlinguistic representations

Requirements for Effective Technology Integration

• Administrative Support
• School or district policies to ensure internet safety and digital citizenship
• Digital Learning Plan
• Teachers plan and teach content-based technology lessons
• School has technology staff
• Professional development
• Setting PDP goals that focus on technology integration
• Ample opportunities to learn best practices
• Teachers feel safe taking instructional risks
• Staff Buy-in
• Time and tools for collaboration and planning
• Equipment

"Teachers must embrace purposeful technology in their classrooms.  

Never use technology for the sake of using technology.  

If it doesn't transform your teaching and the learning in your classroom, 

then skip it.  Don't use it."  ~ Kayla Delzer, Second Grade Teacher

Reimagining Classrooms:  Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders

In Kayla's Ted Talk, she speaks passionately about her mission to revitalize learning and the classroom environment by purposefully embracing technology to flip the instructional model from one that is teacher-centered to one that is wholly student-centered.