Dottie Akers-Pecht

EDIS 5401
Portfolio Preface: Statement on Technology Use
Technology is crucial to 21st century learning because it is so inundated in students daily
lives. Students spend hours on the computer every week connecting with friends via social
networks and reading information on the web. As a result, students must learn to use the
technological tools available to them in an appropriate and effective way. That being said,
technology use in the classroom should always enhance the lesson at hand; it should present
materials and address objectives in a method that would have been unattainable without this
technology.
In this classroom, an overhead projector is available and is connected to a computer. As a
result, students can receive key information through multiple modes of representation, including
through visuals, video, and audio. School laptops are also available when the class needs them so
that students can type, revise, and easily share writing assignments with peers and with the
teacher. Additionally, students can conduct mini inquiries online and can store this located
information within Word or Google documents. Thus, these technologies enhance students
ability to communicate with one another as well as their opportunity to become familiar with
technological tools and apply these aids to their understanding of course material.
In this portfolio, the overhead projector will often be used in order to model the writing
process to students. In a lesson on syntax and writing dialogue, students will be able to watch the
teacher type ideas into the computer as she uses think aloud strategies to make this writing
process visible to the class. Additionally, the teacher will show students how to annotate short
works of literature by first annotating the opening sections of a short story as displayed on the
overhead projector, once again using think aloud strategies to do so. Using a gradual release of

responsibility model, students will then internalize these instructions to learn to practice
annotation in the classroom and to ultimately complete this process independently.
As we study two short poems about identity, the students will conduct group mini
inquiries into these poems, their meanings, and their authors. Students will use the schools
laptops during this process in order to locate information about a poem as they annotate and
interpret it. On a Google doc, students will compile their annotations so that they can work on
and observe one anothers work altogether and simultaneously. For the units summative
assessment, students will compile their personal narratives to a class wiki site. The URL to this
site can be shared with other teachers, students friends in other classes, and families so that the
students have an authentic audience to show their work to. Thus, technological aids help to open
up this assignment and its impact to those figures outside of our classroom.