How Educational Technology Will Be Used in the Classroom
Dear Parents,
Welcome to the new school year! I am looking forward to working with your children this year. I would like to take this opportunity to explain how we will be integrating technology resources and tools in our classroom.
In our classroom, we will do a great deal of our daily work and instruction using the SMARTboard. The SMARTboard is a way to keep students actively participating in our ELA and Math lessons, providing an interactive visual for our whole group sessions. The SMARTboard is also useful in keeping our students engaged and interested science and social studies as well by providing a deeper visual experiences.
We will also be using tablets in the classroom to do many task. Tablets allow our students have instant access to a large quantity of information. Tablets will allow the students to search for information on the internet, download books of interest, and look up course materials. We will also play educational games in our room this year. Gamification of educational content experienced on the tablets increases engagement through making learning fun. Educational tablets offer learning games that help students gain new skills while being fully engaged.
I will also be using a web-based grade book called TeacherEase. This will allow me to manage my classroom’s learning objectives, assessments, rubrics, curriculum mapping, lesson plans, and report card, all in one place (TeacherEase, n.d.).
Because a one-size-fits-all approach does not always serve the best interest of all our students, I will be using a website called Waggle to differentiate instruction for my diverse learners. This is tool that can be used to supplement ELA and Math and can be a successful implementation of a more personalized learning approach. I have attache a link to the website for any parent wishing to learn more.
I will be using the Remind App to keep my parents engaged and informed in our classroom activities, and as a two way communication tool to send reminders, assignments notices, or messages directly to parent’s and student’s phones.
A technology related topic that I would like to also cover is digital citizenship. Digital citizenship is part of the ISTE Standards for Students. This standard covers areas of rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of living, leading, and working in a digital world. In my classroom the fundamentals of digital citizenship I would incorporate to my students are the value in assuming responsibility for your actions online, the importance of online etiquette, how to protect their privacy, how to stay safe online, review their digital footprint, and how to protect their creative rights. One method to monitor digital citizenship is to establish healthy boundaries of the student’s usage. Our school devices have usage tracking applications that are built in so that students can use it to monitor their screen time and adjust or limit their time spent online.
For more information on the Waggle website visit: https://www.hmhco.com/programs/waggle
For more information on the other elements of the ISTE Standard for Students visit: https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/acYLCVO2LPH2AX82JTJvbac?domain=iste.org
Thank you for the opportunity to be part of your child’s learning journey. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any concerns,
Sincerely,
Ms. Capezuto
Online gradebook. TeacherEase. (n.d.). Retrieved December 20, 2022, from https://www.teacherease.com/online-gradebook.aspx
Waggle®. Waggle | K–8 Math & ELA Personalized Learning | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Retrieved December 20, 2022, from https://www.hmhco.com/programs/waggle
