Technology: Enhancing Collaboration Between Teachers, Students, and Teachers AND Students Since (insert year the first piece of technology was introduced into a classroom)

How can technology enhance collaborative learning between teachers, between students, and between teachers and students?

            Although integrating technology into the classroom may seem like a daunting task for many educators, I believe that it is well worth our time for many reasons.  Taking the time to integrate technology into our classrooms will help us more effectively share information with other educators, more effectively present new material to our students, and encourage our students to use technology to publish their work and collaborate on projects with other students.  Because of the many steps involved in integrating technology into one’s classroom, it is easy to see why many educators are hesitant to take on the task.  Educators must first decide what kinds of technology tools might enhance and enrich their current curriculum, become comfortable with the technology they wish to use, decide the best way to integrate the technology into their lesson plans, experiment with the lessons in the classroom, assess the success of the lesson, and decide how to refine future lessons using the technology if necessary (McGrath 1998). 

            McGrath (1998) interviewed a group of teachers who were at the forefront of using computers and the Internet in innovative and compelling ways in science in mathematics.  One of the most important improvements these teachers observed after integrating computers and the Internet into their curriculum was that the technology increased their students’ motivation.  Constantly working to increase student motivation is crucial because students who are motivated are more receptive, more engaged, and more likely to learn and retain what they learn.  The author goes on to list eleven more ways that teacher-student collaborative relationships are influenced by technology but I felt that this was the most important.

            Blogs are also a great way for teachers to collaborate with one another, students to collaborate with one another, and for teachers to collaborate with and give timely and interactive feedback to their students.  Blogs are very diverse because they allow one to publish written responses, videos, graphics, etc for their classmates to view and comment on and for their teachers to view and provide instructional feedback on.  A teacher can create one blog for their entire class that anyone can post on or they can ask students to create their own blogs to post assignments on and use to interact with one another (Pitler et al. 2007). 

            I used blogs as an example to explain how technology integration can positively influence the collaboration between teachers and students because I really like how we were asked to construct blogs to post our assignments on for this course.  I had never constructed a blog before and assumed it was a tedious process but I was proven wrong once again!  It is so easy to simply click on a classmates’ blog link, read their posted response, and continue a discussion.  We can easily share helpful educational resources with one another through our blogs by simply posting a website and giving a very brief synopsis of it.  I also like how easy it is to get feedback from our professor.

           

References

McGrath, B.  1998.  Partners in learning: twelve ways technology changes the teacher-student relationship. Technological Horizons in Education Journal.  Vol. 25.

Pitler, H., Hubbel, E.R., Kuhn, M. & Malenoski, K.  (2007). Using Technology With Classroom                Instruction That Works.  Denver: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.