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Student Teaching Competency Paper: Number One

Integration of Technology and Media
Priscilla McMaster
Regent University
20 February 2021
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Introduction

The artifacts I have chosen for the integration of technology and media competency (f)

are an example of an original Gimkit.com game that I developed and Pear Deck lesson I created.

I have included screen shots of these at the end of this document. The reason I chose these two

examples of technology and media are because both were very good learning experience for me,

not just from the act of creating them, but more importantly, in how the students interacted with

them and the data I was able to receive from that, which I have applied to future planning. .

Wong and Wong write in their book The First Days of School (2018), that students rely on

“teacher groups that continuously conduct research on how to produce lessons that result in

higher levels of learning” (p.36). By stretching myself to learn new technologies, I am

attempting to provide my students with the highest-level instruction I can give them in this

Covid-19 adjusted learning environment.

Artifact One

The Gimkit game that I created used Eighth grade SOL writing prompts and had the

student choose which of the provided statements was the most appropriate thesis statement for

the prompt. This was a good activity for me as a new teacher because I was able to experience

the challenge of writing SOL prompt thesis statements firsthand as I attempted to craft twelve

high quality thesis statements for these prompts. The purpose of this Gimkit game was to expose

students to as many prompts as possible, so these were used in addition to the ones we

brainstorm as a class, and to get them to see the basic structure of a good thesis over and over

again. This activity ended up backfiring for the Gifted and Honors bells as they very quickly

picked on the fact that the longest answer was the right one and then they stopped reading and

focused solely on winning the game. The upside of this was that it drove home the idea that
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thesis statement is not a simple sentence, in addition it provided us with lots and lots of

engagement as a class; which is something that has been severely lacking in this virtual learning

environment. The general education and inclusion bells did not pick up on this idea until they

had been through each of the questions at least once, as the game cycles through the question

bank multiple times, and they were exposed to each prompt and thesis statement multiple times.

This was a great learning experience for understanding how to better anticipate the needs of the

gifted and honors students. Burden and Byrd discuss the six c’s of student motivation, in their

book Methods for Effective Teaching: Meeting the Needs of All Students (2019), and they bring

up the fact that students can be motivated by choice, challenge, and celebration (p. 191). When I

began to utilize this technology and game play into our review, it was the first time that we had

students smile, laugh, crack jokes, or even simple sit up in their seats without having to be

prompted by a teacher. In a year where one of the biggest challenges a secondary teacher is

facing is simply the overwhelming spike in depression among their students, those smiles, and

jokes seem like more of a win than test scores. Not to mention we saw an increase in the amount

of work being turned in once we started to engage with students through this game.

Artifact Two

In addition to Gimkit, I have incorporated a lot of Pear Deck into my direct instruction

lessons. Pear Deck allows me to ask questions and see student responses in real time so that I can

give feedback to students. The data I receive in real time allows me to adjust my teaching within

a lesson to ensure that each unique class is getting the best instruction I can produce. In Waugh

and Gronlund’s Assessment of Student Achievement (2013), they write that, “an essential

component of effective assessment is that feedback of assessment results should be given

immediately following or during the assessment” (p. 176). It is also anonymous when they
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answer questions which makes students more likely to participate in their online learning.

Students seem much more reluctant to participate when the main platform for their participation

is in writing. Also, students are extremely reluctant to unmute themselves over Zoom because of

their family chaos at home. Allowing them to participate in ways that allow them to keep their

dignity improves their willingness to join in on classwork and improves student teacher

relationships. The specific Pear Deck lesson I am including is one on figurative language that I

used to help close up a mini unit on poetry that I created to help prepare students for their writing

SOLs, because one of the biggest areas they needed to improve on was elaboration and figurative

language helps them achieve that in their writing.

Theory to Practice

These two artifacts represent some key principles in teaching adolescent students; allow

them to approach new with dignity and incorporate play wherever possible. My eighth-grade

students are at a vital point of change in their lives where they are now self-aware adolescences,

but still open enough to want to engage in play with their peers. Allowing students to approach

their learning in ways that, as stated in the previous section, give them direct feedback for

learning, invite them into play and interactive learning, and allow them to explore new ideas

from a place of relative emotional safety, students are more likely to engage in meaningful ways

with their learning and their peers. Not only is play an important part of growing up for these

students, it is also a research based gifted strategy. Technology in education is well suited to both

gifted students and struggling learners because it has the ability to be adapted and adjusted to

better meet the needs of each learner (Periathiruvadi & Rinn, 2012). I am not always the best at

adapting to new technology, but it something I see as having a lot of potential for student support

and growth.
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References

Burden, P. R., & Byrd, D. M. (2019). Methods for effective teaching: Meeting the needs of all

students (8th ed.). Pearson College.

Periathiruvadi, S., & Rinn, A. N. (2021). Technology in Gifted Education: A Review of Best

Practices and Empirical Research. Journal of Research on Technology in

Education, 45(2), 153-169.

Waugh, C. K., & Gronlund, N. E. (2013). Assessment of student achievement (10th ed.).

Prentice Hall.

Wong, H. K., & Wong, R. T. (2018). The first days of school: How to be an effective

teacher (5th ed.). Harry K Wong Publication.

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Student choose between number one and number two.

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Students choose between number one and number two.

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Students choose between number one and number two.

Students choose what sort of figurative language they see in this poem from the options:
Alliteration, Symbolism, Simile, and Hyperbole.
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