Caskey Catalog

Technology integration is extremely important in modern education. Students need to learn technology literacy to be able to be well rounded students and as future adults in the job market. Technology is not going anywhere, in fact, if anything it will just continue to grow and become larger parts of future jobs and lifestyles. Project Tomorrow          Project Tomorrow is an organization that has a research project, Speak Up , that provides an annual report of the data from all stakeholders about technology use in education. Project Tomorrow is a free national research project that can be used by school and districts. The report advocates for student voices while also providing educators with helpful information about technology integration in schools. Here is the first page from the 2023-2024 Speak Up findings. Image Source: Project Tomorrow Speak Up          Something that stands out to me, but doesn't necessarily surprise me, is the a...

If you work in education, you likely know that active learning is the best way to get your students actively involved in their learning. If you don't here is a great explanation for active learning from   Teaching and Learning in Higher Education ; "Active learning is an approach to instruction that involves actively engaging students with the course material through discussions, problem solving, case studies, role plays and other methods. Active learning approaches place a greater degree of responsibility on the learner than passive approaches such as lectures, but instructor guidance is still crucial in the active learning classroom. Active learning activities may range in length from a couple of minutes to whole class sessions or may take place over multiple class sessions". Active learning is along the same lines as project-based learning but not every school has the ability to jump right into project-based learning. Basically, actively learning means that the more in...

Online literacy is a large spectrum. From people feeling confident in their internet skills to not knowing how to open a browser. Originally, in 2001, this spectrum was split between digital natives and digital immigrants. Marc Prensky had originally proposed that digital natives had grown up with these digital tools and were inherently digitally fluent, while digital immigrants were essentially learning digital tools as a new language and would never be considered digitally accomplished. David White updated this concept with new categories for online literacy: visitors and residents. Anyone can shift between being a digital visitor and a digital resident, regardless of age. Digital visitors are not interacting socially online, or in simple terms, they aren’t leaving a trace of their time online. Visitors are not posting or liking anything. They’re using digital tools to check on something and end the interaction without responding to an email, sharing an article, posting a comment, ...

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) evaluates topics and trends in classrooms. On their website you can compare year-to-year to see how the tools have changed over time. In order of popularity, the top 8 most common topics in 2024  were:           1. Artificial intelligence           2. Online tools, apps, and resources           3. Creativity and curation tools           4. Equity and inclusion           5. Innovative learning environments           6. Augmented reality, virtual reality, and extended reality           7. Computer science and computational thinking           8. Project-based learning                    I had not really thought about this before, ...

In the modern classroom technology incorporation is incredibly important. While we are giving instruction in math, science, writing and so on, we are also teaching technology literacy. It is important that we are integrating as much technology as we can and when it makes sense. This allows students the ability to practice things like typing skills, navigating and creating digital documents, slide shows, videos and more. It makes me wonder, how well am I integrating technology in my own lessons? What is SAMR?         Before I begin the evaluation, let's talk about the SAMR framework. SAMR stands for s ubstitution, a ugmentation, m odification and r edefinition. The SAMR framework can be described as a staircase, ladder or even a pool with a shallow and deep end, but many resources suggest thinking of it more as a spectrum. Substitution and augmentation are forms of enhancing the learning, while modification and redefinition are forms of transforming the lear...