Integrating Technology Into Teaching: The Technology and Learning Continuum

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Developed by a highly qualified author team, this new textbook is designed for an introduction to instructional technology course taken by education majors. The goals of the text and its companion web site are to enable faculty to teach the fundamentals of hardware and software, and more important, to educate their students about how technology can be integrated into instruction. Using the text and web site, students learn to apply knowledge from their content methods courses and learn how to incorporate technology to promote effective instruction.What sets this text apart is its teacher-tested model, The Technology and Learning Continuum Model (TLC), which bridges the gap between educational technology and instructional design. In use by Recesso for more than six years, the model grew out of a Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grant and is being used currentlyin Georgia to meet the state-mandated requirement that all teachers complete a technology certification program by 2006. The model, however, is not state-specific.Using the 4-color model as a guide, students are able to move beyond awareness of instructional and assistive technology to advanced levels of technology integration. In a structured fashion, pre-service or in-service teachers learn how to align learning activities, objectives, instructional strategies, technology, and assessments to facilitate a progression of student learning. The results are learning units and learning activities where technology is integrated, not used as an add-on, and lesson plans that prospective or current teachers can take into the classroom and effectively use as a guide to instruction. Another important feature of this program is its close alignment with the prevailing technology standards. In these standards-driven times, showing explicitly how content ties to standards is critical.