chapter 6

Chapter 6 deals technology, digital media, and curriculum integration. Technology helps teachers promote active learning and create authentic learning experiences by allowing students to conduct Web-based research, explore concepts in a digital media presentation, create a slide show [maybe as a history presentation], or a database of results [from perhaps a science experiment]. Curriculum integration is the combination of all technology parts, together with each subject-related area of curriculum to enhance learning. The best way for curriculum integration is to put technology into the hands of trained teachers, make it easily accessible, and let them decide how best to use it at the point of instruction in their classrooms. Instructional models are systematic guides for planning instruction or lessons. They help to integrate technology effectively and ensure that the technology is appropriate to the learning objectives. One example is the ASSURE Model. It was developed in the late 1990s and has since become a popular procedural guide for planning and delivering instruction that integrates technologies and media into the teaching process by utilizing a series of steps one must follow.

This week we learned how to make non-linear power point presentations. I found these to be very interesting! I had never seen them before and I had no idea that you could do something like that on power point. I think it is so cool how it is set up like a web site and once a slide is presented there are links on it to other slides [anywhere throughout the power point document] and you get to decide which links to explore first. You can be far more interactive with a nonlinear power point than you can with a linear one and although it’s really tricky to get the hang of, I think its well worth it in the end.

I don’t know much about technology in general, but I thought I knew a lot just in the aspects of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint; Nonetheless, each new lesson that deals with either of these subjects, I still find myself learning so many new tricks. I guess I always just knew enough to get by, and now I am learning a lot that will certainly enhance my presentations in the future. It is really fun to explore all the different features from programs that I have had for so long, but knew so little about!