Technology Integration in Public Education

Working in public education, I worry that we are allowing our teachers and our students to miss out on what I believe will increasingly connect all of us in the future — TECHNOLOGY.

Our students may not be as engaged as they could be… our differentiated instruction could not be as good as it could be… our classroom management could be a bit too chaotic… and we could miss out on tools that would decrease our stress levels and allow us to work smarter. In this post I give an overview of why a tech presence is needed at both an organizational and classroom level.

Expanded Web Content Is Necessary

Expanded tech content should be central to any product whether it be that of an organizational team or the classroom of one teacher. Online content can make the communication of a project much more attainable to stakeholders and students, which can lead to a more effective accomplishment of an objective.

Tech integration in a classroom or training setting can facilitate differentiated instruction and individualized learning, which are foundations for learner engagement and attainment. This is all easy to set up with the variety of cheap or free web-design platforms available such as Google Sites, Weebly, Blogger, Wix, or WordPress.

Remember Web 2.0?

In an organizational setting, I have been able to exponentially expand web content using the open-sourced platform of Google Sites. As a result, my organization is able to share documents and promote collaboration among many other educators with little effort.

By integrating the free web-based platforms of MailChimp, Twitter, and Facebook, my team has also been able to effortlessly expand our communication and stakeholder buy-in.

By providing discussion groups in the closed forums of a Google+ Community, SharePoint, and Padlet, we’ve been able to provide a space for increased stakeholder participation. In turn, this input from our stakeholders has turned into a vital part of our continuous quality control process.

Just think, what would a classroom look like if this kind of technology was integrated in a learning setting? What kind of response would there be from the students, their…