1) Schools are making strides to integrate technology into classrooms to prepare students for the 21st century, but there is still progress to be made. 2) Teachers need proper training to effectively integrate technology through hands-on practice and real-world application, not just technical skills. 3) While technology can help close achievement gaps, it does not solve underlying social and cultural issues in schools that also need to be addressed.

1. EDUCATION 2.0
BRINGING CLASSROOMS INTO THE 21ST
CENTURY

2. Making the Move TEACHING FOR APPLICATION
into the 21st Century
As the world continues its move into the
twenty-first century, it is important that our
schools, classrooms, and teachers do the
same. Technologies continue to improve and
with these advances, educators are given
more and more opportunities to integrate WORKING WITH BLINDERS ON
these into their classrooms.
Here are three articles that highlight the
journey educators are making and issues we
face as we attempt to integrate technology in
the classroom.
MAKING SCHOOL A LITTLE
LESS PAINFUL

3. The purpose of this article was to outline a plan for helping pre-
service teachers develop strategies to better help them integrate
technology into the classroom.
Jung Won Hur, from Auburn University, cited the major issue
facing the current methods for pre-service instruction. Many
colleges and schools of education focus on technical skills but
do not require students to think about how they might apply
their own skills to teaching situations (2010).
This potentially leaves future teachers unprepared
to make meaningful use of technology in their
own classrooms (2010).

4. To set teachers up for success, and to realistically expect them
to be able to effectively integrate technology into the
classroom, studies and researchers agree that they need the
proper pre-service training to do this.
The authors of this article formed a three-
step model for training teachers:
Preparation – basic computer training and
learning programs to use in the classroom.
Exploration – encourage teachers to
examine existing beliefs about technology
and understand how to implement them in
the classroom.
Implementation – put it all into practice!

5. Reading this article opened my eyes to some of the issues that
educators face in terms of working to successfully integrate
technology in the classroom. There are problems that stem all
the way back to pre-service education, where they are taught
lessons from a book, create a generic lesson plan or two, and are
sent on their way. This method is a quick in-and-out way of
passing students along through the program, and does little to
prepare them for an actual classroom. Students need to be given
real world scenarios that test their beliefs and allow them to think
critically about what they’ve learned. From there, they should
test it, evaluate the results, and adjust accordingly.
This lesson applies to educators across the board, and this really
hit home as a rule to follow in my classroom from day one.
All Back to
done? the
Click articles
here!

6. Working With Blinders On
When examining the role of technology in
the classroom, what impact do the
diverse cultural and social backgrounds of
our students play? This is a very
important question for educators and
schools to answer because it a very real
and very pertinent concern faced every
day in schools across the country.
Columbia University professor Anand R.
Marri posits that social backgrounds,
particularly race, adversely affect the
type of education a student receives,
citing research that showed “urban
racial/ethnic minority students are
shown the least powerful ways to use
technology in their educational
experience” (2007).

7. Working With Blinders On
This is not to say that all hope is lost!
Examining the educational
mediums that students have
access to in school (books,
tutoring, computers, etc.), the
more technology-based the
resource, the more that the gap
between minority students and
their middle or upper class white
peers is closed.
Another sign of hope for closing this gap is the
amount of attention paid to the issue. Marri
reviewed the studies of the two major social studies
journals, and the amount of research has increased
exponentially in the past ten years compared the
decade prior.

8. Working With Blinders On
This article was a little scary to read. We can sit
back and think of how wonderful it is that
schools and educators are making strides to
integrate technology into the classroom, but we
still face fundamental race and class issues.
Simply giving a laptop to a room of students is
not enough – we need to make sure that it is
being done for the right reasons and that these
students are being given powerful, useful
lessons to prepare them for success in this
evolving world where technology rules.
The positives here are hopeful. It was very
comforting to see that in terms of performance
and working towards closing the achievement
gaps in schools, that using lesson plans that are
based around the use of technology is one of
the more effective ways to accomplish this. All Back to
done? the
Click articles
here!

9. Making School a Little Less Painful through Technology
A good article to wrap up with is
a teacher bio from the
September/October 2010 of
Learning and Leading, a digital
education journal. This profiles
Mr. Jason Schrage, a middle
school social studies teacher Mr. Schrage helped his students
who is thinking outside the box prepare for upcoming exams by
to teach his students. videoconferencing with another
eighth grade class from another
school. Along with that teacher,
Mr. Schrage led a contest between
the two classes, quizzing them on
information they would need for
their test.

10. Making School a Little Less Painful through Technology
A common problem that teachers encounter
is finding ways to engage their students and
keep them interested in the learning process.
Mr. Schrage could’ve very easily assigned a
chapter to read and had his students answer
the review questions the followed.
However, he got creative and not only did he
get his students involved, he worked with a
teacher and students from another school!
“I like to dabble and explore and
experiment. That’s what
technology does for me. It keeps
me energized, and it trickles
down to the kids.”
- Jason Schrage (2010)

11. Making School a Little Less Painful through Technology
What Mr. Schrage did with his class is EXACTLY what this class
has built towards and what it is helping to prepare us for as
future educators. By getting creative and thinking outside the
box, he energized his students and got them excited about the
learning process by integrating technology into the classroom.
This is a great example of just one of the things we are capable
of doing in the class with the help of technology.
All
done?
Click
here!

12. Conclusion
Schools are still a long way away from catching up to the technologically savvy twenty-
first century. However, strides in the right direction are being made. The point must
be made, though, that simply supplying schools with materials is not enough.
Teachers need the proper pre-service training so they enter the field with a clear plan
for effectively integrating technology into their lesson plans. Also, we should not be
foolish enough to think that just by integrating technology into the class that it will
magically solve the social and cultural issues that our school systems face. They are
helping the problem, but they’re not a cure all. Lastly, and most importantly, we
should be hopeful for how technology will benefit us. Looking at the world around
us, it would be impossible not to see the countless benefits we’ve seen as technology
has been integrated into our lives. Let us hope that the same focus and drive will be
used to deliver the same benefits into our classrooms.
Brandon Mitchell