Technology-Infused Classroom

You walk into a classroom, but what you find is not a room with twenty or more small desks and one large teacher desk with two or three chalkboards. As you enter this room, you will find large tables, where three to four students are sitting, collaborating, and communicating on a digital project. There are two desktop computers at each of these tables, which are laden with relevant hardware and software to aid in meaningful, thought-provoking lessons and activities. In the back corner, you may find another large table with a laptop and printer setup, with a small storage unit below it to store accessories to the Whiteboard and Document Camera systems. There is a file cabinet, but it doesn’t house the regular paper files, because those are all found on the school’s network server. This cabinet actually contains flip cameras, digital cameras, and I Pods, as well as the accessories needed for them.  You look around further, and realize that you do not see any hard copy books, because they are found on the students’ Internet tablets. This is how I would describe the perfect technology-infused classroom. This room would be considered the epitome of all classrooms and allows for an exclusive learning environment for all students, no matter their intelligence or skill level.

Using these technology tools in my class would be a dream come true. The reality is that many school systems do not have the budgets to include these tools for all classrooms. But, implementing technology resources in the classroom can be done without many of these tools. Being an effective 21^st Century educator, I want the following things to be present in my classroom.

• Becoming more of a facilitator of learning, rather than a teacher presenting information for the student to recite back to me.
• Working along with my students to produce a class website, which would include all the daily events and assignments, blog discussions, educational web links, and even showcase the students’ best work, is also a goal of my future 21^st Century classroom.
• Using the Internet in more effective ways will allow me to I plan to use more project-based, collaborative methods to reach the goal of producing a life-long learner. This would include using websites like http://www.filamentality.com/ to create Web Quests for students to become more engaged in their own learning.
• Focusing not only on the state curriculum standards, but also on media and information literacy, to create more critical and analytical thinkers, especially when using various researching methods.
• Allowing the students to more responsible for their role as a student and the information that they produce.
• Planning more virtual field trips when the school budget doesn’t allow for the actual experience, as well as taking advantage of teleconferencing through Skype or Google Hangout to create a dialogue with experts in various areas of life, as well as students all over the world.

These are just a few ways that one can create an effective, student-centered learning environment. I have included three very interesting and influential videos that definitely describe what the 21^st Century Classroom should move toward in educating our children and the importance of the Technology-Infused classroom.

   

Leister, J. (2008, July 2). 3 phases of educational technology. [YouTube Video file]. 

     Retrieved from http://youtu.be/-Ir4-EFVhzI

Nesbitt, B. J. (2007, November 28). A vision of K-12 students today. [YouTube Video file]. 

     Retrieved from http://youtu.be/_A-ZVCjfWf8

Rhonnieful. (2009, October 29). Teaching in the 21^st century.  [YouTube Video file].  

    Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjgKzrkMetU&feature=colike