Technology Integration Matrix

Technology integration is what the Instructional Media program is all about, but until today I hadn't seen such a succinct organizer for understanding how to go about this. This table (click on it for a full sized view) maps uses students make of technology for learning vs ways teachers incorporate technology into their learning activities.














Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida (2009)

I think one important bit of advice here is to resist the urge to feel we are somehow short-changing students if we are not always operating at the far right of the table which corresponds in some ways to the higher orders of thinking and learning in Bloom's taxonony. Personally, I don't see this table as presenting a progression of goals from less to more valid or more ideal, but rather as a patchwork quilt of possibilities. I expect that in the classroom of the future, students will engage in all of these uses of technology at some time and that at any one time an observer will see many different levels of engagement with technology occurring.

If you go to the Technology Integration Matrix website, you'll find an interactive version of the table with links to videos and suggestions for teachers in classrooms with different levels of computer access. Each video shows an example of a classroom application, the NETS standards, and links to any websites or software illustrated in the video. The software selections I looked at were not free, however, so were not really useful to me as we have no budget and can't download!

The link under the table (to the Florida Center for Instructional Technology) is much more promising in terms of providing free and ready-made resources. Under the Starting Points (menu on the left) I checked out what they had posted for Math teachers. There are links to downloadable clipart, presentation backgrounds , themes and templates, podcasts (free from iTunes), and other applications using laptops. Although the laptop suggestions seem to be mostly for Macs, there is lots of PC software that will give similar results and the ideas are good even if you don't have a computer for every child.

If your district, state or province has a similar website with great resources and links, please share it here through a comment. Sometimes I feel like we teachers often go madly off in all directions looking for interesting stuff when a lot of the groundwork has already been done.