Giving Compass' Take:

• As the advancement of technology grows in education trends, we see some teachers embracing technology in the classroom completely, and some who are working in tandem with these tools to create influential learning opportunities. At the end of the day, it will be the teachers who have the power to guide purposeful learning, not technology.

• Why is it important to train teachers to use tools effectively, but not completely depend on them for classroom instruction?  

• Read about why students need teachers influence over technology tools in the classroom. 

I often hear people question whether teachers are willing to embrace technology, but if we really want to transform teaching and learning, I think the better question is, “Are we willing to change our expectations for how and what students learn?”

To explain the difference between adding technology and powerful teaching and learning, I want to share examples of three different types of classrooms I’ve visited recently.

In this first classroom, the teacher is calling on her 5th graders one-by-one to identify each state and its geographic location. When I talked to one of the students, she told me that they were learning the states by copying them from an atlas onto a map packet because “the teacher thought it was important to know them.”

In the second type of classroom, each student had a device to log on to computer adaptive programs that individualize their learning path. Although the students have devices, this lesson is basically a digital worksheet.

In the third classroom, Kim Cawkwell co-created the learning experiences based on the learning objectives and students’ interests. They called it the Project Ideate.

Each of the three classrooms described above have ample technology and might be considered twenty-first-century classrooms—if technology was the only qualification. But the learning experiences designed in each room is developing three very different types of learners, workers, and citizens.

Technology and access to information aren’t the most important factors in creating twenty-first-century classroom; teachers are. The power of the teacher comes not the information she shares but from the opportunities she creates for students to learn how to learn, solve problems, and apply learning in meaningful ways.

Read the full article about teachers and technology in classrooms by [u'Katie Martin'] at EdSurge