A-Z: E

Technology should be used to create opportunities for students to move beyond engagement in content, to a level where their learning can become differentiated, personalized, and more relatable. (Kolb, 2017)

Authentic extension should:

• Involve real connections to everyday life and contexts

• Be a bridge between student learning and students’ lives

• Build skills for everyday living

Tech Connection to Classroom: “A fourth grade teacher is using Google Hangouts to virtually host author Judy Blume conducting a book club discussion on her book Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. The students ask Judy questions and listen to her share ideas about writing and the novel.” (Kolb, 2017)

Ebooks stand for electronic books. These books are available in digital form from vendors such as Amazon, iBooks, or Google Books.

Tech Connection to Classroom: Using eBooks in the classroom can provide multiple tiers of support for all students, including text to speech, font size adjustability, and even reading progress monitoring.

E-Learning: A web-based learning environment that allows instructors and students to interact through the computer without worrying about time or place; capitalizes on the current “anytime, anywhere” notion of learning.

Tech Connection to Classroom: Making sure your students can access classroom content on an easy to use platform like Google Classroom or Moodle will go a long way to keep students connected to learning beyond the school day, in case of absences, or homebound situations. It also makes it easier to approach your classroom with a blended learning model and gives you a digital hub for your classroom that makes classroom management easier too!

In education, the term equity refers to the principle of fairness. While it is often used interchangeably with the related principle of equality, equity encompasses a wide variety of educational models, programs, and strategies that may be considered fair, but not necessarily equal. It is has been said that “equity is the process; equality is the outcome,” given that equity—what is fair and just—may not, in the process of educating students, reflect strict equality—what is applied, allocated, or distributed equally.

Tech Connection to Classroom: BIf you goal is to have students have deeper discussions about Literature or class content, then you could use Padlet! You can have the entire class brainstorm and type their responses simultaneously while projecting their ideas onto a screen. After the Padlet brainstorm, prompt in-person small group conversations during which students can reference the class discussion on individual iPads or Chromebooks. Read more on Tech Equity here.

To increase or improve in value, quality, desirability, or attractiveness. Enhancement in the classroom should offer “practical ways to enable students to engage in higher order thinking skills and access deeper learning opportunities than traditional tools typically can.” (Kolb, 2017) For example, Authentic Enhancement:

• is a value added to learning experiences
• should help to elicit higher-order thinking skills
• Should help to differentiate learning
• Should help to personalize learning
• Should provide supports that traditional tools cannot easily provide (Kolb, 2017)

Tech Connection to Classroom: “A social studies and mathematics teacher has students working in pairs to use a website that is tracking the live primary election results. The students are posting their predictions into a Google Sheets collaborative spreadsheet to share that they think will happen in the next hours of voting based on the real-time voting results. The students then set up the spreadsheet equation editor to calculate how far off the their predictions were as the live results come in.” (Kolb, 2017)

Students who are unable to communicate fluently or learn effectively in English, who often come from non-English-speaking homes and backgrounds, and who typically require specialized or modified instruction in both the English language and in their academic courses.

Tech Connection to Classroom: Using an extension like Read and Write for Google can help students acquiring the English language at all levels with supports that include text-to-speech, talking dictionary, picture dictionary, vocabulary list builder, word prediction, translator, and voice notes.

Tending to draw favorable attention or interest. “For engagement through technology to be effective, the tool should help focus students’ attention on the learning goals and the task at hand rather than distract from it. One element of a truly engaged learner is an environment of active learning. Active Learning occurs when students are dynamically focused on the learning goals and not just busy doing what looks like learning.” (Kolb, 2017)

Tech Connection to Classroom: A few examples of instructional strategies effectively used in conjunction with a technology tool would be monitoring, think-alouds, modeling, and other reflective practices drawn from literacy learning ( Duke & Pearson, 2001).