Technology and K-12

Using Technology to Facilitate K-12 Instruction      

This paper explores the concept of technology and its use to facilitate instruction.  Thus, it is with this in mind decisions about the best use of technology to facilitate instruction should be made.

Blogs

When visiting Mr. Walker’s webpage, the Khan Academy website link is presented (Walker, 2012).  Khan Academy offers facilitation and support in learning through technology.  What is best about this site is that the tutorials are available to the end user for free.  Another valuable aspect of this technology is that they are able to learn at their own pace.  If they are viewing this at their own discretion at home, in a computer lab, or any personal computing device they are empowered to pause, replay, and/or watch at their leisure.  Khan Academy has resources to support subjects such as Math, Science, Social Studies and much more.  Another useful link provided on Mr. Walker’s blog page is Google Earth.  When utilizing Google Earth a Math, Science, and/or Social Studies lesson, can be given real world applications.  An outstanding tool is the ruler available in Google Earth to measure distances.  This can be brought to a very personal level gaining the student’s interest as it can involve their own schema.  As educators we are taught from the foundational levels in reading that bringing the “self” into the lesson is one of the best ways to interest a student and Google Earth does the job.  These are but a few of the many websites/links Mr. Walker’s Blog page references as regards facilitating K-12 instruction.