Using Technology

Most of the administrators I talked with want to know how versed teacher candidates are in technological issues.  Your response to a question such as the following should demonstrate your awareness of and comfortableness with technology as a powerful teaching tool.

How will your students’ overall performance improve as a result of technology?

     A:   I believe my students’ performance will improve in three specific areas.  One, students will have increased opportunities to become more actively engaged in the dynamics of a lesson.  Technology will offer them an array of information available nowhere else.  Second, I believe technology will help me help my students improve their thinking skills as well as their problem-solving abilities.  Through the use of technology, we will be able to focus on higher-level thinking skills that go beyond rote memorization into new worlds of discovery and exploration.  And, third, it will provide me with some incredible opportunities to differentiate my instruction.  I’ll be able to use technological resources to target specific students with specific instructional options.  I was able to incorporate all these concepts into a unique project during my student teaching experience.  The project, which we named “Explorers for Hire” was developed as part of our social studies unit on the exploration of the New World.  Students had to obtain information from the Internet about specific explorers, they had to write personal biographies, they each took on the role of a specific explorer and applied for a selected exploration, they mapped and tracked their routes of exploration, they planned their voyages and the supplies they would need, and they reported the results of their exploration in the form of special documents and records.  It was a great project – one the students embraced enthusiastically and one that generated a new interest in social studies.

 In your response to this question you need to include two things.  One, you must demonstrate your knowledge of technology and its instructional advantages.  And, two, you must provide the interviewer with a specific example of how you put those principles into practice.  In other words, you must be able to “talk the talk and walk the walk.”