Previously,  I have commented on various applications of specific technologies in my classroom, and described efforts to integrate technology to improve communications, to recognize diversity, and to support a constructivist approach to student learning. Underlying all of these efforts have been two initiatives that my district has adopted to create consistent strategies in all the middle school classes. These are reciprocal teaching (RT), and differentiated instruction (DI).

Prior to starting my degree work at Eastern Connecticut State University, I had rarely considered that technology could be an aid in revealing strategies that I could use to promote my students’ learning.  I recognized the utility of the computer for word processing, but beyond that I really didn’t feel that I had the skill or imagination to center my entire teaching style upon “gimmicky” technological applications. It seemed that there was an immense gulf between what technology use implied, and the processes of reciprocal teaching and differentiated instruction that I was required to implement in my classroom.

At first, for example, I could not see that technology could be useful in supporting the theory of reciprocal teaching that, as explained by Mastropieri and Scruggs (2007), has four major parts:  summarizing, predicting, questioning, and clarifying, and incorporates the use of a process whereby “students assume the role of teacher during instruction, and take the lead on asking questions” (p.310). Furthermore, outside of specific instances where assistive technology could aid a student in navigating the hallways, or provide other types of physical support, I was not ready to accept that technology could assist me with my students  in “match[ing] instruction to their readiness level [so that] learning occurs” (Wormeli, 2003, p.97), a very practical description of  differentiated instruction. How would these strategies lend themselves to the applications of technology?

First, I had to accept that my students were capable of using technology, in fact had to use it to obtain relevant information in many cases, and that they were capable of being responsible when faced with the issues that the use of technology can present. To assist them, over the span of two years I worked with the Media Specialist at my school to create a lesson that dealt with normal issues of citing sources, recognizing primary and secondary sources, understanding, and avoiding, plagiarism, and finally acknowledging, and recognizing, both the benefits and dangers of using electronic sources (See Appendices F and G ). It was necessary that these electronic sources be accessible, and also that many misleading and potentially dangerous applications of technology be pointed out.

I was very pleased to discover that one of the basic elements of reciprocal teaching, “pairing and sharing”, lent itself quite well to the exercise being undertaken. Students went to specific sites, and, working together, analyzed, and shared the potential positives and negatives.  They applied the four basic components of RT by first reporting on the activity through an explanation of the assignment (summarizing), then figuring out what elements of the sites might not be appropriate to access (predicting), creating a “Ten Rules of Internet sites” that they felt would identify the positive and negative aspects (questioning), and finally creating a “Guide Book to Good Eighth Grade Internet Sites” (clarifying) (See Appendix H).

By starting with a pre-assessment of knowledge about the sources and sites to be accessed, I was able to create productive pairings that helped facilitate DI, and the final “Guide Book” had sites submitted by all levels of students in my classroom. By using something as simple and accessible as the Internet, my students’ were able to expand their learning into areas that I hadn’t even considered previously. The medium, technology, used in the delivery of the lesson, made it more enjoyable to the students, and allowed them to create their own learning. Basically, the lesson employed nothing more than Internet access and word processing, but it opened my eyes to the potential that technology presented.

            That potential has proven to be an enormous influence on the way that I convey information to my students. Prior to my involvement with educational technology, I was very much a “stand-and-lecture” teacher, using a blackboard to highlight important information, and textbooks to provide supplemental exercises. That began to change when I attended a conference on “technology in the classroom”, and I discovered Kathy Schrock. She was the first to demonstrate to me, through access to http://kathyschrock.net/, that as Holmes and Gardner (2006) point out, “much more information is much more accessible than before. Indeed, it is at our fingertips as the personal computer acts as a portal to the connected world. e-Learning has the potential to offer, at anytime and place, richer resources than most traditional methods of delivering learning and teaching” (p.52).

            Schrock’s site became the first of many to change the perception I had of myself as a teacher. Ironically, though I did not know it at the time, it was the first hint I would receive of an educational approach called “constructivism”, which, as described by Bruning, Schraw, Norby, and Ronning (2004), is a system where “learners are active in constructing their own knowledge”, in classrooms “in which teachers and students interact in ways to stimulate both knowledge construction and cognitive growth” (p.195). It does not depend upon the traditional model of educator-to-student information delivery; rather, it turns that process on its head by identifying the students as educators, and creates a situation where the barrier between the teacher and student becomes negligible, particularly in the roles they play to facilitate learning.

            My response was to literally change my position in the classroom. My approach to providing the curricular elements that was required of my discipline followed. This change in my teaching method closely parallels the process described by Richardson (2003) in which “planned and often unplanned introduction of formal domain knowledge [enters] into the conversation through direct instruction, reference to text, exploration of a Web site, or some other means” and leads to a “provision of opportunities for students to determine, challenge, change or add to existing beliefs and understanding through engagement in tasks that are structured for this purpose” (p. 1626).

            While it did not occur overnight, and it certainly wasn’t without its setbacks, use of the computer as a lesson and strategy generator became a central aspect of my classes. The flexibility provided by the almost unlimited number of choices presented to students for topic choice, research, differing points of view, and methods of presentation, expanded the depth of the lessons being presented. A perfect example of this occurred when I began to apply the Authoring Cycle Project elements created in EDU 545 (See Appendices J and K). As described in my first reflection on the fourth ISTE question for EDU 570, this involved combining many curricular elements, and depended in large part upon educational technology. At the time of this first reflection, the Authoring Cycle Project was a mere concept; a proposal for a unit that might never really be used. All of that changed when this particular unit, technology and all, was chosen to be the heart of the new eighth grade curriculum in my middle school.

The first aspect of the Authoring Cycle to be used for the teaching of a unit based on the young adult novel My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier neatly supports constructivist thinking. It rests upon the recognition and establishing of prior knowledge that is built on to create further understanding and to generate more learning. Fortuitously, the choice made for this particular Authoring Cycle was to use virtual tours to establish schematic knowledge of military camps during the Revolutionary War. General Israel Putnam’s camp serves as a very pivotal location in the novel, and has been preserved by the State of Connecticut as General Israel Putnam State Park. The park conducts on-site excavations and tours, but more importantly, its web site, http://putnamelms.org/camp.html  offers a condensed virtual tour which was connected with a second virtual tour of larger scope and fame, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania http://www.valleyforge.org//phototour/ .

 The first site provides an introduction to life in the camp, and its deserved title as “Connecticut’s Valley Forge”, as well as an assortment of tremendous links to the life and times of General Putnam, a featured character in the novel. The second reinforces and expands students’ perceptions of the living conditions within the camps, as well as featuring General George Washington, another central character in the novel. This project has just been implemented within the last two weeks; students are creating journals that reference camp material, and are writing “letters home” from the camps. To date I have been extremely pleased by the results, particularly with the effect that technology has had in making my students far more independent learners than they were at the start. As a bonus, to my great surprise and enjoyment this activity has become a favorite of one of my more severe special education students (See Appendix I). His comment, which I think sums up the benefits of using educational technology strategies far better than I ever could, is “I can go there just like anybody else.” I hope that I can continue to benefit from the strategies presented by educational technology, and that my students are provided with expanded opportunities to learn information from the classroom that becomes useful and relevant in their own lives as well

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