As you experiment with new ways of enhancing learning through the use of technology, you'll continuously be assessing which digital lessons provide the most bang for your buck in terms of meeting your curriculum needs while still creating a meaningful learning environment.
Here's some food for thought:
The Florida Center for Technology Development has created the Technology Integration Matrix, which is comprised of characteristics of purposeful learning environments crosswalked with teacher technology integration levels.
What's especially helpful is that, in publishing this matrix, they've also embedded videos of teachers discussing/demonstrating lessons in core subjects (math, science, social studies, language arts) to illustrate each cell of the matrix. I don't know about you, but I always learn a lot just from glimpsing inside another classroom.
NOTES:
- Although these cover only core subjects, a teacher of any subject can benefit as the purpose is to inspire and get your own creative juices flowing -- the same is true for videos that do not take place in a middle school classroom.
- The schools here seem to be Apple/MAC happy, but adjusting the lessons to a PC or Chromebook format shouldn't pose an impediment to using the ideas presented.
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*Here is the MAIN MATRIX LINK WITH VIDEOS ; FYI: The videos use Quicktime ... you may be asked for permission to run the video OR you may have to download it if it's not already on your computer; HERE is where you can download if need be.
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- You can also use the grade level or the digital tools index for a quick view of videos and tools from the matrix.
- There is also a printable version of the matrix with descriptors of each cell.