Graphic Organizers

Incorporating technology in the classroom effectively, teachers must use those strategies that are directly aligned to practices that engage students in higher levels of direct learning. Teachers must be cognizant of academic learning time as they deliver a lesson, because large differences in the amount of academic learning time built up by different students generally result in wide variation in student achievement. This means that some students may choose not to engage in teacher assigned task and become complacent in learning, especially when not monitored by the teacher. For example, during the set, effective teachers focus the students’ attention on the learning outcome and prepare them to learn. Often in their zeal to get to the meat of the lesson, some teachers neglect to include the set in their teaching. One easy and quick way to get the students involved is to ask them review questions, but an excellent set technique is to begin the lesson with an activity that illustrates to the students how they will be able to use the learning in the future.

Teachers can use an assortment of technology related tools to increase academic learning time to stimulate visually appealing organizers as a mental set to a lesson. These technology tools can then be designed as cues, questions, and advanced organizers that focus on the enhancement of the students ability to retrieve, use and organize information about a related topic or standard. To summarize some of the tools available would include online resources like mind maps, videos, rubrics, and timeline generators. Each of these tools have potential to cue students on what they are about to learn during the onset of a lesson in terms of advanced organizers. The idea is for the teacher to trigger student interest in high engaging content at the onset of the lesson to allow students to access prior knowledge as they apply it to new concepts. For more information on how to apply Web 2.0 Graphic Organizers in the classroom got to Digital Sandbox Visual Learning.