Tips to Transform Teaching with Technology

Consider how we use technology in the classroom. Does it provide a substitution such as taking notes online rather than taking notes on paper? Or does it create new possibilities, such as creating a classroom set of notes where all students collaborate and have access to the insights of each other in an efficient, transformed manner? Kevin Combs and Kacey Sensenich urged attendees to use the acronym SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition) to analyze use of technology in the classroom to best engage students and transform teaching.

Other highlights:

Summarizing learning is critical to effective instruction.  Combs recommends students create a meme to summarize a lesson in two sentences.  Click here to try it out.

Polling can also assess students’ learning with a simple question, “What is the main idea of…” and students can respond to the poll via text or through a website.  Poll Everywhere displays the answers as a shifting Wordle as responses are entered.