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.
