Technology integration in third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms in a Florida school district. Alexandra Smith

These teachers have the potential to shape the way their students view and use technology. In todays world students are using phones, iPad, television, and limitless resources, With the rise of technology someone need to teach the students, we cant expect students to just stay in this day.

The use of technology serves constructivist and sociocultural principles. Constructional view, learners create knowledge as a result of their environment, building on existing knowledge and dependent upon the relevance of the lesson tot heir own lives. From the sociocultural side technology provides a platform and the tools to engage via numerous media with other individuals and groups beyond immediate reach of the leaner

There is an obvious need for students to know and understand technology to be to compere in a 21st century global economy. But doing so is hard to do because teachers don’t understand how to use it and its hard to find realistic solutions that can be implemented into todays classrooms. The low level of use can be broken down into two sections: External factors such as availability an support Internal factors such as teachers attitudes and their beliefs. How a teacher views technology plays a vital role in how often they use technology.

Another reason for low technology use is teachers not attending technology related professional development activities the 12 months prior to the survey. According to a study current professional development programs do help to improve teacher technology knowledge but they have problems They are too broad and are not subject specific They compress too much information into short trainings They often teach about technology that isn’t available to the teachers.

When a teacher attends these PPDs and they are difficult to understand it only makes the teacher less likely to want to use technology in the classroom. If they would put more focus on individualizing the programs they would better understand, but we don’t have the time to do so.

Another reason for low technology use is many teachers don’t have positive results. They use technology and it hasn't gone good for them. And many that do have positive results find it hard to design and implement the lessons into their classrooms. Many problems include difficulty with classrooms management, reliance on others, required extra time, and made it difficult to use existing materials. Technology use is important because you want to teach students how to use it responsibility and to understand it.

The study noticed that the amount of technology in the classroom plays a vital role in the usage. So just because the school has it doesn’t mean its going to be used. Levels of technology integration will always remain a vital are of investigation because as time moves on new technology is being made and we have to make sure that we are teaching students how to use it.

There are vast differences in the appropriate type of technology for kindergarteners and seventh graders and the lack of definition on what's right and wrong makes it hard to understand what they should be using and what shouldn’t be used. If teachers don’t know what they are expected to teach then how do thy know if there students are able to stand up to everyone else with technology usage. How do they measure up?

Students today use technology but the only way that we will be able to compete in the ever growing world is to teach students how to use the technology. The only problem that so many schools are facing is that teachers don’t know how to use technology.

“We will rob our students of tomorrow if we teach today the way we taught yesterday.”

Pittman, T., & Gaines, T. (2015). Technology integration in third, fourth and fifth grade classrooms in a Florida school district. Educational Technology Research & Development, 63(4), 539-554. doi:10.1007/s11423-015-9391-8