Possibilities -> Realities

Today, I was awakened by the alarm on my cell phone. Then after wiping the crust
from my eyes, I checked my phone to see whether I received any text messages during
the night. Soon after eating breakfast and rushing to school with a fuel-efficient car, I
opened my laptop in order to take notes in class. During the break between my classes,
I decided to continue writing an important essay that was soon due. I researched via
Google and the periodical hosts online, then typed my research faster than if I wrote
them by hand.

To many of us, technology is very much integrated in our lives, and for schoolwork,
it is an indispensable tool. While technology is a very important part of how we learn
and how we do our work for school, for many other people, technology is the only way
they could really work and function well in life. These types of technology that help
people with disabilities are known as assistive technology, which are "...products,
devices or equipment, whether acquired commercially, modified or customized, that
are used to maintain, increase or improve the functional capabilities of individuals
with disabilities" (Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs, 1998).

With the recent years, we are seeing more and more how assistive technology is
changing lives and making possibilities into realities in the classrooms, which used
to be unimaginable a few decades earlier. But the beauty of such technology is that
not only are students with disabilities enabled to learn and participate in class, but
teachers are also given the opportunity to diversify their instruction and be
empowered to reach out to these kinds of learners.

Therefore, if lesson plans could include the use of technology such as online games
to reinforce a topic, provide opportunities for students to use VoiceThread to turn in
homework rather than the usual paper-pencil method, or using talking word
processors, then students with disabilities are not only given the opportunity to learn
and be included in the lesson, but even students who do not particularly have the
disability are encouraged to explore these types of technology and appreciate their use
and importance to the classroom learning of all students.

As educators who will face a great variety of learners, it is important that they should
know and understand the use of assistive technology in the classroom. Educators
should be given the chance to train on the types and purposes of these tools, and they
can research on their own and explore how they can use such technologies in lesson
plans (Family Center on Technology and Disability, 2005).

"Why must lesson plans be revised to include disabled students?" In 2001,
President Bush signed for an education reform known as the No Child Left Behind Act.
Whether this act was a success or not, that matter will not be discussed here, however,
the very message in its name and what it stood for is the point I am striving to make. It
is important for the educational system to fulfill its duties to all students, to include all
students in the classroom learning, and to provide them with the tools and resources
for them to attain their goals. When it was nearly impossible to do such a feat in the past,
but with the gigantic strides in technology that now have, it has become possible to cater
to all learners. And who knows, by empowering them with knowledge accessed by
technology, who will become the next great persons of our future? Who will become the
Helen Keller, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or even Beethoven of tomorrow?

References:

Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs. (1998). Assistive Technology Act of 1998. Retrieved from http://www.ataporg.org/atap/legislative.php.

Family Center on Technology and Disability. (2005). Assistive Technology in the Classroom. Retrieved from http://www.fctd.info/assets/ppts/1/Assisstive_Technology_in_the_Classroom.ppt?

1237563981.

Image:

Baby Boomer Care. Retrieved from http://www.babyboomercaretaker.com/assistive-technology/.

Putting It All Together

The advancement of technology has been incredibly rapid. The pace is unprecedented, especially in the recent years when the latest model becomes obsolete as soon as you take it out of the store. Consumers are clamoring to keep up as companies compete to not only get to the most advanced technology, but also the most profitable. Considering all these, there comes a demand for the educational system to keep up with the digital age. Therefore the question is, have technological advancements really been incorporated into the system nationwide? And more importantly, how about the school system here on the island: what are we doing to keep up?

For these reasons, standards, such as the NETS*T and lesson planning models, such as ASSURE, have been established so that the educational system can grow from not only using the book and lecture methods, but to have students learn and use technology in the classrooms (Academy of Teaching Excellence, 2002). Using these standards and model, our group took on the task of making a lesson plan that makes use of technological media.

Our target learners for this particular lesson were fifth graders in a Guam public school setting. We then explored and analyzed the Guam Department of Education Standards for fifth grade in order for us to begin setting up our goals. Here is one of the standards that we used in order to establish the content area we wanted to teach:

5.2.17 Analyze Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), the Gettysburg Address (1863), his views on slavery, and the political obstacles he encountered.

Then, having a topic for instruction, we worked with NEST*T standards in order to solidify our focus on our objectives in regards to the use of technology:

Creativity and Innovation

Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.

Students:

a. Apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.

b. Create original works as a means of personal or group expression.

c. Use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues.

d. Identify trends and forecast possibilities (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008).

And hence, we came up with these objectives for the lesson:

Students will be able to:

Explain the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Define terms such as slavery, equality, and freedom.

Relate the concepts of slavery and freedom to their personal lives.

Demonstrate their understanding of the core concepts of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Submit a video through the Internet, using a video editing software and a digital camera.

Develop characters, a plot, climax, & resolution in a story (Aguon, Cameron, Cuenco, Kaminaga, Mailloux, & Navarette, 2010).

It was very important for our group to know our objectives in order for us to understand our targets and with our objectives as our reference point, we were more confident to continue to develop our lesson plan. However, one of our setbacks was making our objectives because the assignment requirements were not clearly stipulated. For example, our group was confused at first whether the lesson plan would be included within the video. And then the following class meeting, we were told that the lesson plan and the video were to consist of two different perspectives: the lesson plan from the perspective of the teacher and the video from the perspective of a student. For the continued development of this assignment, we hope that next time, the requirements would be written down, clearly and explicitly stating what is expected for the groups to accomplish. Along with that, a rubric updated for the assignment would be really helpful and a sample video invaluable.

Despite those, I would commend the ASSURE model, because it helped keep our lesson focused and the elements of the lesson cohesive with each other. Also, it keeps the lesson plan developer diligent and reflective on what he/she is teaching. It is definitely a format that I can see myself using in my instruction.

Lastly, the use of technology was very interesting. As an artist, technological media (we used iMovie, Illustrator, and Garage Band for this project) has opened more ways for creative expressions. And I believe, that is what we can expect of our students- their creativity to arise and astound us in how they would juxtapose technology, what they learn in class, and their own creativity. One of our jobs as educators and as a school system is to empower the students with this ability to create. Therefore, technology must not be excluded nor treated merely as an afterthought, but technology should be included and be a vital part in how students learn and apply what they've learned!

References:

Academy of Teaching Excellence, Metropolitan State College of Denver,C. (2002). The Assure Model. Retrieved from: http://www.mscd.edu/~act2/courseconstruct/assure.html.

Aguon, N., Cameron, H., Cuenco, R., Kaminaga, K., Mallioux, C. & Navarette, B. (2010). Lesson on Emancipation Proclamation.

International Society for Technology in Education (2008). Standards. Retrieved from: http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=NETS.

Guam Department of Education. (2010). K-12 Content Standards and Performance Indicators. PDF. https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=Z2RvZS5uZXR8Y3VycmljdWx1bS1hbmQtaW5zdHJ1Y3Rpb258Z3g6N2NiYmJjYTIwNTAyZjgyMA&pli=1