Engage, Enhance, and Extend Student Learning using Technology

Technology is a source today that people in the education field did not have the luxury of just a few years ago. As technology continues to grow, so do the opportunities and resources available to educators. Technology, and other resources, can be used to engage students, along with enhancing and extending the learning process. In art education, technology is a fantastic resource for students to be able to gain even more knowledge about particular artists, time periods, or styles of art.

Engaging students is one of the most important parts of the learning process. If students are uninterested in the subject being taught then they more than likely will cause problems for themselves, other students and you as the teacher. Creating motivation and interest can be difficult. Brad Kuntz has a great article on how to engage students through the use of technology, instead of shying away from it like some teachers with older methods do. Technology is only getting stronger, so allowing students to do things like use the Internet to look up answers to questions in class, or doing more electronic assignments instead of using paper, can help them be more interested during class.

Enhancing the learning experience involves using technology to develop an understanding of learning goals that could not have been accomplished without those tools (Keren-Kolb). Therefore, the use of technology helps develop a more sophisticated and deeper understanding of presented information, and could potentially make information easier to understand. Technology can also make information more relatable. In the classroom, regular or art, technology can also allow students to present learned information in a newer fashion or provide a variety of options for information presentation.

Extension of learning in the classroom takes information and processes learned inside the walls of a class and connects them with every day events in students' lives (Keren-Kolb). This part of the learning process helps students continue to be learners on their own, without teachers and even after they are done with school.  The correct use of technological tools helps students learn outside a typical school day so that they can bridge what they learned in class to new experiences in the outside world.

Art is a great way to keep students engaged in any activity. Rena Upitis of Queen's University makes a valid point in her article that art not only engages students in different ways, but also helps improve basic skills such as critical thinking and problem solving. Art education is a field that has not always been known for its use of technology. However, new standards now require art teachers to incorporate technology in to lesson plans. Through both basic skill improvement and the increased use of technology, art has become a popular way for teachers in the core classrooms to engage and enhance the learning experience for their students.



This fun video sums up what the rest of this blog has to say. Students of the next generation are being born with more and more access to technology. Old methods of using simply a whiteboard is no longer an option to be able to keep students involved in learning. Technology is the newest, and often the best, option to engage, enhance, and extend information that is passed from teachers to their students.





Citation

EDTP504 (March 27, 2011). Digital Literacy- Using Technology in the Classroom. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ySocUyI7I 

Image: http://www.stream.ie/news-education/back-to-school-ipad-deployment-training/

Keren-Kolb, L. (2013). Engage, enhance and extend learning!. In Learning & Leading with TechnologyInternational Society for Technology In Education.

Upitis, R. (2011). Engaging students through art. The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, Retrieved from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_Engaging_Arts.pdf

Teacher Productivity App

There are multiple apps for the iPad that allow teachers to be more efficient and productive in their work. From grade books to class attendance to behavior monitoring, iPad apps can do it all. However, it can be difficult for many teachers to keep up with these aspects of the classroom.


TeacherKit allows teachers to do all of the above mentioned tasks in a simple and efficient way. Teachers are able to set up on their home page all the classes they are in charge of. If a teacher is only in charge of his or her classroom then it is not as difficult to organize, but for specialty areas such as art, music, physical education, etc. teachers can be in charge of running multiple classes of students. You can either mark them as present or absent and the app keeps track of daily attendance.

Each classroom also contains the capabilities to arrange the desks of each child in the order they actually are in the room. The visual aid can help teachers plan out classroom layouts as well as solve issues that students are having with certain classmates. The app allows the teacher to keep records of behavioral achievements or problems. All the teacher has to do is click on the specific student and add a comment to their notes file. It can either be marked as good, bad, or a simple note about a student's behavior. The picture to the right shows a sample of what a positive note about a student may look like.

The app is designed to specifically cater to each teacher's style. Obviously the classroom layout is a feature that does this, however other aspects of the app are able to be personalized as well. A teacher can set the grading scale for his or her grade book along with manually entering grades and points per project and the weighted totals of those assignments. The app can be linked to a teacher's DropBox, which would allow for time efficiency when needing documents, photos, etc. The app also provides efficiency with contact information. Each student has specific information under their name, like parents' names and contact information. There is a way to mass email all parents if information of any kind needs to be sent out in a quick way.

I used TeacherKit for about two weeks and realized all the ways it could help me as a teacher. It organizes important information that I would need throughout my day. Although attendance is usually done through a school system, it helps to have a back up just in case. I also think being able to have parents' contact information at a moments notice is important. For me, math is not my strong suit. So to have an electronic grade book that would average grades for me would be a great time saver.

Using iPads in the Classroom

The use of technology is rapidly increasing in today's society. More importantly, the use of technology is vastly expanding in the field of education. Children are learning at earlier stages in life how to properly use new technologies, such as cell phones, computers, and iPhones and iPads. The latter is a booming industry for children and adults alike. In the past three years, Apple Inc. had released five different versions of the iPad, including four generations of the device along with the iPad mini. Each generation of the iPad brings new pieces of technology and allows for more and more advanced apps.

Co-workers at every grade level are constantly collaborating on how to improve learning environments and strategies for students. Technology is an excellent resource when improving these strategies. Specifically, iPads have begun to provide enormous opportunities to broaden students' horizons. Apps have been created to help engage students in learning all types of materials. Apple has created over 20,000 educational apps to teach students everything from basic core subjects to art to sign language. The video to the left shows a demonstration of one of the many art apps available for use in the classroom. In it the man shows how to use the different tools to compose a composition, in this case an eye.

The use of iPads in the art classroom is also becoming more prominent. Tricia Fuglestad and Suzanne Tiedemann are two art teachers that created a website with their opinions on the pros of iPad use in the art classroom. They also incorporated students art, videos, app resources, and links to professional artwork made from iPads. According to these two teachers the iPad does not hinder skill development, but instead helps improve traditional skills while teaching learners how to use new digital tools and concepts. "They are learning to work in layers with transparency, undo their mistakes, zoom in for more detail, [and] resize/crop/rotate to create good compositions..." stated Tricia. Suzanne followed this statement up by stating, "It can enable students to create and share digital content and media focusing on art and cross-curricular learning."

21st century technology continues to grow everyday. For people in the art industry, or any field for that matter, that were not fortunate enough to grow up using iPads, they must spend time developing those technological skills. Unfortunately, a technology gap between young and old has separated integrated learning with technology; however, teachers are becoming more educated in this field so that their students are able to learn more. IPads can be helpful in almost all aspects of education, but only when used properly.

Resources

Apple Inc (2013). Apple in education. Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/education/apps/

Fuglestad, T (2012) & Tiedemann, S (2012). iPads in art education. Retrieved from http://ipadsinart.weebly.com/index.html

Kevin Honeycutt (2010, May 11). Raising digital kids - art apps for the iPad. Retrieved 1/30/2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFj2KEFbmf8