Blog Post 3 -- Technology Implementation Strategies

Locate an article that describes how technology can be incorporated into school libraries or the classroom. Summarize 3 key points from the article. Describe at least two new strategies that you will use technology to improve your instructional strategies.  Don’t forget to include a reference for the article at the end of your post.

In their article “Say Cheese!: Digital Collections in the Classroom,” Carter and Sumrall (2006) describe their experience walking their students through a species identification project with the use of digital cameras. Three main aspects of the article included:

• An explanation of the process, including: the best digital camera to use for your project, how to group your students for the best results, simple instructions on helping them take good photographs and edit them, and a breakdown of the instructions you provide to students.
• The students learned valuable technology skills while fulfilling the science standards as well.
• An unexpected outcome of the project was that it taught the students an appreciation of preserving nature. Rather than plucking the leaves off the trees to create a display, they were able to showcase their findings digitally.

Although perhaps just a tiny bit dated, this article provided me with some really great ideas for digital projects I would like to collaborate on with other teachers.  Of course any kind of species identification would be an awesome project for the science classes at school. We will have a photography class at our school starting next year. I thought a project of this nature would be the perfect time for the students in this class to collaborate with the science students, and teach them the basics of taking a good picture, and editing it in a computer software program. I would also like to take a project like this one step further by teaching students to publish their digital collections online.

I think this concept can also be used for our art students, in order to create a digital collection of the work they create in class, and then publish their work online. They will not only be learning valuable technology skills, but will also be thinking in terms of marketing their work to a wider audience via the web.

Citation:

Carter, L., Sumrall, W. J., & Curry, K. M. (2006). Say cheese!: Digital collections in the classroom. Science and Children, 43(8), 19-23. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/236897985?accountid=7113