21st Century Literacies: Teaching with Technology

      Efficient Technology           In the article, “Getting inside the black box: Piloting and evaluating education technology in schools” by  Kristen Weatherby and Alison Clark-Wilson, the efficient use of technology is discussed. The authors state that they have worked with 150 small businesses that are working on correcting some of the  most pressing  issues in education through technology (Weatherby & Clark-Wilson, pg. 23, 2019). The article continues to state that efficient, effective, successful use and integration of technology is a collaborative effort, and that there are several steps that schools and educators can take to ensure that the  technology they are integrating is actually solving problems within education and their classroom. The first step is to figure out what a schools needs from technology. Once it is certain that the educational issues affecting the school can be solved with technology, the n...

Technology Integration in the Classroom            In the article, “Transformative Technology in the PK-12 Classroom” by Sarah Westerlin and Spencer Vogt, the authors discuss the necessity of technology integration in the classroom, problems with tech integration, and use of different technologies within the classroom. The article explains that “integration is using a variety of contexts, districts, grade levels, and classrooms, depending on factors like budget, program or district goals, and teacher familiarity” (Westerlin and Vogt, pg. 68, 2022). This means that the effectiveness of technology integration relies largely on teachers, whether or not the school is provided an adequate budget to purchase technologies, train teachers in these technologies, or if the school district holds technology integration at a high importance. Teacher familiarity plays one of the largest rolls in technology integration, because research has shown that the relationship be...