What is Meaningful Technology Integration?

What is Meaningful Technology Integration?
            For me, meaningful technology integration is when students and teachers both use technology in a way that enhances the learning of the students. It means that the teachers are not the only ones using technology. The students have access to it as well. The teachers are not just using technology for the sake of saying that they are using technology. I think another important part of integration is the cooperative efforts of the students. They should be able to work together using the technology. A picture I saw on twitter made a table of the differences between technology use and technology integration. One of the characteristics of technology use was that it was sporadic. I know a lot of classrooms that have SMART Boards in them. The teacher will use it to show examples of what the kids are supposed to be doing. In my practicum, my cooperating teacher will put on a game called Shark numbers and the students get to use the SMART Board to play. The game is the students have to figure out what the number is using the hundreds, tens, and ones blocks on the screen. If they get it wrong, a shark will take a bite out of their boat. If they get it right, a dolphin will jump across the screen. While I think that is a cool idea, I don’t necessarily think it is true integration. The students and teacher are using it as math practice and the students have to work together to keep the boat afloat, but if that’s the only way it is being used then it’s not full integration. The use of the game is not common. In the whole of last quarter, I only saw her use it twice.
            I believe that technology should be used in the classroom as a way to give students the opportunity to reflect on both their learning and their environment. One article I read was about a study that was conducted to explore meaningful and effective technology integration in early childhood education. They had students in kindergarten and first-grade classes create digital photo journals that would represent their experiences in and out of the classroom. The researchers discovered that their study advocates a child-centered approach to technology integration. They found that giving the students the digital cameras gave them more empowerment. It gave the students a way to show their world from their point-of-view. The way we use technology in classrooms right now does not allow the students the freedom to show the adults how they see the world. They can feel stifled by the fact that they are restricted participants in a world where others make the rules. In this study, the students met the 4th of the ISTE standards. It says the students have to use a “variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.” The students used the cameras to take the pictures and then they used the computers to put their journals together. They would have had to solve their problems if they had things go wrong with their journals.
            In conclusion, I believe that students need to be able to have access to technology at the same time as the teachers. I also believe that it should be used to enhance the learning of the students and not just for the teachers to be able to say that they use technology in their classrooms. Technology integration should be used as a way for students to learn how to work together. The 6th and 7th ISTE standards are all about working together and it’s important for students to learn that.
I think that I would use technology as much as I could in my teaching as long as it doesn't replace me or cause problems in my classroom. My CT would use the Shark Numbers to kill time when some of the kids are at reading groups and the other kids are cleaning up their desks. I would hope that I could find a better way to incorporate games and other tech. I think that having math games on the computer is a cool way for kids to practice their math, but not if it's only being used to kill time.

Sources
Anderson, Steven W. (2013) The difference between technology use and technology
integration. https://twitter.com/web20classroom/status/848545561024249856
Ching, C. C., Wang, X. C., Shih, M., & Kedeem, Y. (2006). Digital photography and journals              in a kindergarten-first-grade classroom: Toward meaningful technology integration in              early childhood education. Early Education and Development, 17(3), 347-371
ISTE Standards for Students. (2016). Retrieved April 2, 2017 from the ISTE Standards                   website: https://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students-2016

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