Linking Technology with Promising Practices To Improve Teaching and Learning.

Many of today's teachers are receiving training to perfect their technology skills. One place to begin technology integration during preservice education is at the instructional design level, focusing on student performance assessments and alignment of school curricula with state standards. The Teachers' Internet Use Guide emphasizes alignment of standards and lessons. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, with which the Use Guide is aligned, focus on authentic student performance. Technology also offers promise for student projects. Students can use technology to complete authentic projects. However, if they use the Internet to get information, teachers must be concerned about originality and plagiarism. An alternative involves combining student products and performances, to be assessed as a portfolio item. With feedback from teachers, students progressively revise and refine their own products. This teaches them to create and edit professional material. When they complete the product, they can communicate their findings to others using presentation software. This method is important because students learn with peers in a global context rather than in isolation, producing original products and performances that are valuable to themselves and others and that lend themselves to authentic assessment. (SM) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** Linking Technology with Promising Practices to Improve Teaching and Learning Lorraine Sherry Research Associate RMC Research Corporation 1512 Larimer Street, Suite 540 Denver CO 80202 Phone: (800) 922-3636 FAX: (303) 825-1626 sherry@rmcdenver.com lsherry@carbon.cudenver. edu October 1997 STAR Center Newsletter (Support for Texas Academic Renewal) PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 1 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. 2 3 SST COPY AVAIILIOILIE Linking Technology with Promising Practices to Improve Teaching and Learning If you believe that the day has finally come for technology to transform teaching and learning, it's time for the nation's teachers to be prepared. (Arthur E. Wise, president of NCATE.) School technology spending is on the rise. According to a national survey (White, 1997), the nation's schools are predicted to spend an estimated $5.2 billion on educational technology during the 1997-98 school year, up 21 percent from 1996-97 spending. Schools have focused their technology plans on putting the infrastructure in place for networking and Internet access. Teachers have been honing their technology skills at inservice training sessions (Sherry, 1997) and statewide conferences. They are also participating in professional development workshops for state, school district, and school personnel to provide support for programs authorized by the IASA, such as the recent technology planning sessions conducted in Edinburgh and San Antonio, Texas this September by our STAR Center technology team members. These efforts, however, represent activities that address only one piece of the puzzle. As William Reid aptly points out, . the work of curriculum and schooling is labor-intensive. Changing what schools do is largely a matter of changing what people do, not of