Webinar Review

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                                                                  Overview


       
  I chose to review the webinar Technology Integration to Meet the Needs of the Common Core by Andrew Miller, who has experience working as a technology expert and consultant in school districts.In the webinar, Miller talks about technology standards that the authors of the common core have established for schools and how teachers can implement those standards in their classrooms. Throughout the webimar, Miller interacts with his audience by asking them questions such as how they feel about using technology, how much time they think they should devote to technology, and whether they think their children know more about technology than they do. He asks these questions not only to assess his audience, but also to understand their current teaching situation with the goal of helping them find solutions to issues they may have with implementing technology in their classrooms. Therefore, the webinar contains both philosophical explanations (understanding the relationship between common core standards and technology) and practical applications (actually using technology in classrooms) for its audience. M
iller is a strong advocate for using technology in the classroom. However, he does not necessarily believe that technology should be used all the time. Like the authors of the common core, he believes that teachers should use their discretion in deciding under what circumstances technology should be used in the classroom. Thus, Miller does not think it is necessary, or even desirable, for teachers to always conduct classes as seen in the picture below.



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          Miller does see benefits for both students and
          teachers in using technology in the classroom. When citing the common core standards, he emphasizes some key words used in those standards when analyzing the importance of students becoming familiar and comfortable when using technology for academic purposes. Technology helps students to find multiple resources on a topic and allows them to compare and contrast those resources in order to find the most important ones for a topic or subject matter that they are researching. As a result, students learn how to investigate. A similar point is raised in the article Exactly What The Common Core Standards Say About Technology. In this article, the author states that by using technology, students make complicated decisions about ways in which to use technology for research projects. The teachers also take a more "active" role in their classrooms. Miller says before technology became a prominent part of the classroom teachers were more like consumers of knowledge-following lessons from textbooks, etc. However, technology has forced them into the role of producers of knowlege-they create their own lessons as they have more resources at theur disposal.
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   Miller also goes on to emphasize that integrating technology in the classroom is every teacher's
responsibility and not just the responsibility of the technology experts in the various schools. Teachers should thus work colloboratively in trying to find ways to implement technology in their classrooms. Another important point that Miller discusses is about diagnosing students in order to undertsand their technology skills. Even though students may understand how to play video games or downsload music on their i-phones, it does not necessarily mean that they know everything there is to know about technology in a school environment. Teachers need to diagnose their students to see what their technology skill level is instead of making assumptions about their skills. Miller talks about rubrics as efficeint ways to assess students' abilities. After assessing their abilties, teachers can have a better understanding of how much technology they should use in the classroom and develop reasonable expectations on how well students will perform on projects that require the use of technology. Miller concludes his webinar by explaining how formative assessment and collaborative learning can be enhanced with technology. Since formative assessment is done on a short term basis, teachers can come up with innovative and creative ways to assess their students and to teach them while they are being assessed, Technology tools, such as google docs, can help students learn collaboratively, as they can interact with each other on a project even if they are not in the classroom.
                                           
                                                              
                                                                Connection
    
            Although I am currently not a teacher, I, as a student, can relate to many ideas and explanations that Miller gave in his webinar. If I were a teacher, I would use technology but only on occassions when it will enhance student learning. Thus, I wouldn't use technology just for the sake of using technology. The article Technology and the Common Core shows reasons and circumstances under which technology should be used. I think learning how to use technology for looking up resources is an indispensible tool, and if I am teaching, I would like to teach students how to conduct searches for articles using the internet. Technology is  also so useful for conducting presentations. Oftentimes, when we listen to a lecture, we can get distracted and not pay attention to some of the main points that are being presented to us. However, tools like prezi and powerpoints can help us keep track of those main points, as we have the opportunity to use more learning skills, visual as opposed to just auditory skills. As a future teacher, I would like my students to not only use but develop more learning skills. Therefore, I would like to use those tools. In addition, I would like to use collaborative learning tools, such as google docs, so students can work with each other even if they are not in class together.  The article Technology Permeates Common Core Standards supports the view of the importance of technology in the classroom.
                                                              
                                                               Reflection    
      This webinar was very useful to me. I think the most important thing I learned in this webinar is that all students come to the classroom with different experiences in technology. I was under the assumption that school children probably do not need much education in technology because they are so skilled at using i-phones, video games, etc. However, I realized from the webinar that I was very wrong about this. As a result, I learned how valuable diagnostic can be.Using diagnostics and rubrics can help teachers understand those different backgrounds and will be very helpful for teachers to decide what they want to teach. I also learned from this webinar that it is important to give reasons for using technology. After listening to this webinar, I will be sure to assess students on their technology skills prior to teaching them new skills. I will be sure to use a rubric to evaluate them in order to categorize their different skill levels. As Miller says, all the common standards have verbs and it is important to associate the verb with the purpose for doing or using something in a lesson. This is another valuable point that I learned in this webinar and one that I will pay attention to in my future teaching practices. I will be sure to pay attention to the verbs of every standard I am trying to adhere to and be sure that students are being trained on the particular skill associated with that verb.  I thought this webinar was very effective and well done. The presenter gave a power point presentation to go along with the webinar, and as a result, the lecture was easy to follow.  I think webinars are very important because the presenter interacts with his or her audience over particular issues. It is good to listen to a lecture, or read a book, about a particular topic, but when it comes to a topic such as teaching, it is best to hear from not only the presenter but also from audience members in order to hear issues that they are dealing with (most likely these issues will be similar to ones we have to deal with). Since the webinar is conducted through the internet, one can hear different perspectives from all over the country as well as over the world; thus, issues will not be limited by geographical concerns. I chose this webinar because I wanted to understand the relationship between technology integration and the common core, as these are two areas that many people have recently focused on.
                                                 Course Learning Objectives
    This webinar relates to the standards set out in learning objective number four because the presenters goal in this webinar is to explain and clarify misconceptions between the relationship of technology and the common core. He does this effectively by going over the verbs used in each standard of the common core and shows how technology integration can help educators meet that objective. He also is very clear in stating that the common core does give teachers discretion on when they should use technology. The webinar also helps with meeting learning outcome number one by showing various forms of assessment, including diagnostic, formative, and summative. The presenter goes over rubrics and emphasizes the importance of not making assumptions about students' technology skills. He makes strong arguments for this as well.