Technology Standard

The other standard that I created for myself was to better understand how to incorporate technology into my science lessons. In my opinion, using technology in a science lesson would be similar to how you would use technology in lessons across all of the content areas. The most important thing to remember is that just because a lesson incorporates technology doesn't necessarily make the lesson more beneficial for the students. When using technology during teaching, it's crucial that you always have a purpose. If the technology isn't enhancing the student's learning in some way, do not use it. One way that I see technology being very useful in a science lesson could be when trying to represent a concept more concretely. As we have discussed in class, it's most beneficial to have a concrete representation of something that students can explore in a hands on manner. However, for some topics (an example could be a lesson about planets) it is more difficult to bring in something that concretely represents these objects. Therefore, I think this would be a time where a lesson could benefit from the use of technology. In order to give the students a better understanding of the planets, you could use a video to show the students information specific to this topic. This would also help keep the lesson developmentally appropriate if you were doing this with younger students. The use of technology in the classroom should also correlate to your goals for students. You need to understand what the needs of the students are and how you can use technology in a meaningful way in order to make decisions to inform your teaching. If the technology will not help the students learn, then don't include it in your lesson. The technology cannot replace the teacher. Therefore, it's crucial to ensure that the technology furthers the students understanding, but the teacher should also be using effective science teaching strategies to support the students in other ways.