Response to Dexter Article (Post 2)

I thought Sara Dexter, in her chapter entitled "eTIPs-- Education Technology Integration and Implementation Principles," made some excellent points about incorporating technology in the classroom. The most important point I felt Dexter made in her chapter dealt with incorporating technology based upon a teacher's daily and unit objectives or "learning outcomes" (58).  The only way technology can successfully be incorporated into the classroom is if the technology helps students master the objective of the activity.  If technology does not help meet the learning objective(s), teachers should not incorporate it.  However, Dexter recognizes that it is important for teachers to identify the potential advantages or the value that technology can add to a lesson (58).  It is also crucial that teachers be trained in how to effectively incorporate such technologies.


Dexter brought up some of the more specific ways that technology can be used to augment student learning.  She mentioned that technology can be beneficial by helping students recall information, synthesize learning, provide content information, and symbolically represent a variety of information (Dexter 58). This means you can use technology for a variety of beneficial reasons.  A teacher can also use technology to differentiate and individualize student instruction and assessment (Dexter 59), and use formative and summative assessments more effectively in order to monitor student progress (Dexter 61).  Technology can be used to accumulate data for formative assessments.  I also loved the idea of having students save their work in different drafts, so that the teacher may check the various processes (Dexter 61).  What a great idea!  As far as using technology for assessments, I think the only negative would be the amount of work it would require teachers to do upfront in order to set up all of the assessments, software, etc.  Tackling a full year's worth of formative and summative assessments all at once might be a little overwhelming for any teacher, especially one who isn't proficient in using technology.

That brings me to the another important point Dexter made in her writing.  I really appreciated what Dexter said about providing teachers with access to technology and giving them the technical support staff that they need (62 and 64).  If a teacher does not have regular access to technology, what's the point of he or she planning to use it?  In my school, we have constant availability problems with technology.  This leads me to never plan to use school resources outside of my classroom.  When I do use it, I have a strict time limit that restricts my class' usage.  These things make it too difficult to plan effectively and therefore, I plan around NOT having access to technology- which negatively affects my students.  Also, if you give teachers the access to technology but not the tech support, teachers will not be able to effectively use the given technology (which I have also seen firsthand in my school). 

Overall, after reading this article, I feel the teachers should use technology in their classrooms if they have access to it and if they feel it adds value to the educational process of their students.  I have experienced firsthand how technology can really augment a lesson and make it more meaningful for the students!