Running head: EVALUATING TECHNOLOGY

Evaluation Technology Use Through Thomas and Boysen

Jarka Alam

Towson University
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In their article “A Taxonomy for the Instructional Use of Computers”, Thomas and

Boysen (1984) state that for many years, teachers have been misled into thinking of computers as

“as a teaching device rather than a learning device”. This belief is what serves as the basis of

their taxonomy of computer use in the classroom. Thomas and Boysen (1984) state that a

taxonomy of computer use should focus on the needs of the students as students are the ones

whose learning should benefit from the integration of technology. Thus, Thomas and Boysen

(1984) created a taxonomy that aims to “provide guidance for the development of lessons and

their instructional use” and is evaluated on the five categories of “experiencing, informing,

reinforcing, integrating, and utilizing”. The categories serve as steps that students follow in the

learning process.

The first step in Thomas and Boysen’s (1984) taxonomy is “experiencing”. This step is

used to set the scene for further learning in the future. Technology is used to give students a

model that they manipulate for a more intuitive understanding of a concept. In the next step,

“informing”, students use the technology from the previous step to learn information on a

subject. The technology is used as a replacement for a standard textbook that students might use

in class. After this, students reach the “reinforcing” stage where they use technology to help

them to strengthen the skills that they have learned about a specific concept. In this situation,

technology takes the place of general “drill and practice” scenarios. Students then move on to the

“integrating” step which lets them apply their learned skills in new situations. This helps students

to eventually utilize their learned skills in different scenarios. Finally, in the last step, “utilizing”,

technology is used to allow students to look at more complicated and realistic ways to apply their

skills in various settings.

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This paper will evaluate the Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) video, “Poetry

Exploration” and how well it follows the steps of Thomas and Boysen’s taxonomy. This video

shows students in a high school English class use their laptops to research different poetry of

their choosing. Students look up information on the poem and their poet in order to create a

lesson that they can present to their classmates. The lessons are created with a video editing

software that students use to create presentations about their poem and their poet. The

presentations can be viewed as a movie and include both pictures and text. One group even used

email to contact the writer of their poem and corresponded with her to gain more insight into the

poem they read, which they then incorporated into their video.

For the most part, this lesson uses technology effectively and hits upon many of the

categories in Thomas and Boysen’s taxonomy. The lesson starts at the informing and reinforcing

steps. Students are using their devices to do research on a poem of their own choosing, meaning

that they are gaining new information that they previously did not have and reinforcing their

learning by looking at their poem from different angles. Next comes the integration step where

students create their own lesson. In this step, students are able to use their technology in a new

scenario. Instead of simply learning about their poem and their poet, they are figuring out how to

present the information to others in a clear and effective manner. Many of these students have

probably never taught a lesson before, and technology is giving them the opportunity to do so

through with the use of the video-editing software. It is unclear whether or not the lesson reaches

the final step of the taxonomy. Not enough information is given as to what will be happening

while students are presenting their lessons and whether or not additional steps will be taken after

the presentations.
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The use of technology in this lesson is beneficial to students during every level of the

taxonomy. Students get the opportunity to practice their research skills which will be beneficial

to them in many subject areas and throughout all levels of their educational career. Students also

get the opportunity to use their research in a practical application. The research aspect of the

project is one of the strengths of the lesson plan. Students have many opportunities to expand

their understanding of poetry through informing and reinforcing. The best example of this is the

group who reached out to the writer of their poet – they are not just using secondary sources but

are also able to use technology to gain personal and authentic information about their poem. This

group straddled the reinforcing and integration categories by figuring out how to use technology

in a new scenario (reaching out to writers) to expand their understanding of the subject.

One weakness of the lesson comes at the final stage of the lesson. The video from TIM is

brief and does not give much information about the final steps that students will be taking to

present their lessons to their classmates; however, it can be assumed that students will play their

videos for their classmates and the teacher will use some sort of rubric to evaluate the completion

of the project. I believe there are other methods students could use for their presentations past

just playing it for their classmates. For instance, one way to more beneficially present lessons

could be through a tool such as FlipGrid or VoiceThread. In both these websites, students can

upload their videos and all their classmates will have the ability to view the videos and leave

comments and start discussions on the student-created lessons. Giving students the opportunity

to discuss the lessons in a safe space can help to foster both collaboration and higher-ended

thinking, allowing the TIM lesson to reach the utilization stage of Thomas and Boysen’s

taxonomy.
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Overall, the lesson set up by TIM is effective when considering the stages of Thomas and

Boysen’s taxonomy. While there is room for improvement in the final stage, the lesson accounts

for the needs of students by allowing time for research and a lot of focus on the informing and

reinforcing categories of the taxonomy. This allows students to develop a thorough

understanding of the topic before they move onto more advanced stages such as integration. This

lesson plan can be utilized in many different classrooms through out all levels of education.

When properly implemented by the teacher, the lesson can be used as a great assessment to

evaluate creativity and presentation skills and also student understanding on advanced topics.
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Works Cited

Poetry exploration. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=1_4XSNw48gA&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=TechnologyIntegrationMatrix

Thomas, R. A. & Boysen, J. P. (1984) A taxonomy for the instructional uses of computers.