Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Nicholas Kowalski
Regent University
Introduction
In this 21st century society a mastery of technology has become not only
beneficial but also absolutely crucial. On top of a mastery of technology, students are also
exposed to an innumerable amount of media resources. Since students will have to grow
up in a world where technology and media has to be properly navigated and mastered in
order to survive, it then becomes the duty of a 21st century teacher to make sure that
lesson are properly planned in order to best integrate and train students on these skills.
Rationale
teacher plans their lessons both of these artifacts that have been provided are lesson plans
that focus on utilizing technology and navigating media resources. The first of the two
centers around a lesson in which students are working together in order to analyze
documents and answer guided reading questions in order to synthesize the information
from all above documents leading to the students attempting to answer the very large,
cumbersome question of “Why did Americans head west during the mid to late 19th
century?” This lesson could have been about 20 years ago and hit all of the same content
points that it hits today. However, I was able to integrate the use of technology into this
assignment to better help to bolster to skills of these students. Students in this lesson use
their Chromebooks and shared Google doc links to search through this information. They
are also asked to share their Google doc with their partners in order to ensure that they
are able to collaborate in this new technological method. Part of integrating technology is
about simply that; integrating technology into lessons that could have been previously
TECHNOLOGY AND MEDIA RESOURCES 3
done without it. This lesson integrates not just the use of Chromebooks, but also the
sharing of Google docs, which have allowed students to work on the same document at
The second artifact is a lesson in which students not only have to use technology,
but also navigate media in order to obtain information that they seek. This was a lesson
that focused on inventions and adaptation that helped to settle the Great Plains. First they
worked in pairs to look up these inventions in order to understand what they looked like
so they could identify them in old photographs that they were analyzing. Secondly they
had to use the Internet as a resource in order to discover why these were invented in the
first place, what they did, and how they helped to settle the Great Plains. A large portion
of this assignment is navigating the Internet as a media resource. This is not only helpful
to completing the lesson, it’s crucial. Students had to figure out how to sift through
bucket of information and sources in order to discover ones that were genuine and
helpful.
Reflection
Technology and media resource integration can help to engage students by tying
education into something that has become increasingly necessary in the average student’s
social life; social media. By using social media and cell-phone apps as a means of
educating students in the classroom, we find that students are more engaged in the
material. This does create more opportunities for distraction in the short-term, which is
true, but it also creates an opportunity for teachers to facilitate the necessary skills of
being able to curb distractions when working in an online environment full of them
Integrating technology and media resources into lessons, as has been already
started, is essential for students to survive in the 21st century world, but it can also help to
further close the opportunity gap that exists among student from different socioeconomic
backgrounds. Students that grow up in a lower socioeconomic group often lack the same
technological resources as their other peers, because of this they can often find that these
important technology- based skills are much harder to obtain. Integrating technological
skills into lessons at school (as well as proper media resource use) can help these students
to overcome the lack of resources at home. Therefore giving them an equal shot further
Integrating technology into education doesn’t just mean integrating it into lessons
to benefit students. It can also help administrations to take steps forward and keep their
institutions relevent and engaging. With technology we can create programs that can
make institution wide data, and logistical problems a thing of the past (Stoddart, 2015, p.
587). Viginia Beach City Public Schools is currently in the middle of such an overall.
They have been introducing a city wide program that helps students to have access to
information, assignments, grades, etc., but also allows teachers and administrators easy
Resources
Devlin, M., & McKay, J. (2016). Teaching students using technology: Facilitating
(1), 92-106.
Koroleva, & D.O. (2018). Potential for Using Mobile and Networking Technologies in