Integrating Technology in the Classroom

www.wtvi.com/teks/tools
This website describes how we can integrate technology into our classrooms, especially since we must start focusing our attention on 21st Century learning. I believe that this website is beneficial to teachers because it gives examples of how we should integrate technology into our lesson plans. It also gives examples of lesson plans that we can use in our classrooms. The positive qualities of this website include the easy navigation through links, the set up of the help tools, and the user-friendly screens that allow the user to navigate easily through the website. On the other hand, this website may not be up to date on the links, because some are redirected and others are expired. Overall, I feel that the majority of the links are working and are very helpful for teachers, especially when we are facing the ultimate challenge of how we can incorporate technology into our instruction on a daily basis.

In using the website, it will link you to several different sites. For example, I found a webquest site off this site that will help you create webquests for your classes. With this site, you can also use existing webquests that other teachers have already created. This would be an excellent way of allowing your students to be in control of their own learning. Also, this would allow students to collaborate with fellow students to determine how they derived with the solution to the problems. This site also give examples of how to use technology with one computer per classroom or one computer per person, which is great since all classrooms are not equipped equally. I also enjoyed seeing the basic tab on this site which will give basic examples of computer skills that all teachers should know, like copy and paste. This link will come in handy for many teachers who are leaders or administrators.

I feel this website will be beneficial for all. The only downfall is that the website is not current and up to date. Some of the things are recent, but not within the last two or three years. Some of this was created in the early 2000's, meaning that some information is out of date, especially when it comes to workshops and certain TEKS that may have changed or not be used currently. This website falls into the 21st century information age because it discusses ways we can incorporate technology into our lessons. Many educators are puzzled at how they will follow the TA-TEKS and apply them into their lessons. Some of this information can be used and incorporated into the new TEKS. Much of the information is useful and is new products like using webquests or interactive puzzles, etc. Technology will be integrated into our classrooms and we as educators need to be prepared as to how we can achieve this.