What This Means for Instruction

Experts recommend the following practices in utilizing technology to assist in teaching and learning.

Across Content Areas:

• Use technology to adapt teaching to individual student's needs.
• Provide students regular access to technology.
• Use technology and software that supports exploration (Collins, 1990).
• Afford students opportunities to communicate using technology through:
• collaborative projects;
• e-mail;
• video conferencing.
• Allow students to use technology to explore real-world problems and open-ended questions, conduct research and manipulate legitimate data.
• Allow students to use technology to assemble, modify, organize, analyze and study (Valdez, McNabb, Foertsch, Anderson, Hawkes & Raack).

In English Language Arts Classrooms:

• Offer students access to multiple forms of technology -- word processors, communicative technology devices and online resources.
• For early elementary students and older students struggling with reading, let students listen to stories read by computer. Students can follow along with words as the story is being read (Robinson, 2001).
• Utilize drawing and graphic software for students to draw pictures and write stories about the pictures.
• Apply video and word processing as mediums for different genres of writing.

In Mathematics Classrooms:

• Use technology to provide simulations and models to give students experiences that would be difficult to complete or copy without using technology ( Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, 2000).
• Use software to provide visual representations of geometric figures for students to explore and visualize changes (Rubin, 1999).
• Use graphing software to allow students to analyze and interpret data and see the impact of changing variables.
• Use spreadsheets, probes, calculators, graphing or data analysis tools and other integrated tool sets to develop students' understanding of number, number sense, operations and real-world applications (Rubin, 1999).