Teaching Elementary School Teachers to Integrate Twenty-First Century Teaching Strategies

An elementary school in Hawaii began integrating Web 2.0 tools into their curriculum to prepare their students to solve problems using twenty-first century tools. They started with Google Apps For Education (GAFE) and commissioned the researcher to design an online module that trains teachers and educational assistants to use and integrate GAFE in their classrooms.

The researcher conducted a literature review of online module development projects and the integration of GAFE in classrooms and used the knowledge gained to design an informative, engaging, and effective online module by using a rubric that rates the content, design, interactivity, and usability developed by Foster, Shurtz, & Pepper in 2014. The researcher used Weebly to design the module’s layout, content, and slideshows; SoundCloud to host the module’s audio lessons; Google Forms to worksheets that challenged users to recall what they had learned. The module was deemed highly effective to the learners and succeeded by accommodating different learning styles. The researcher identified navigational and operational changes that can be made to increase the module’s effectiveness. The researcher has since been commissioned to add more GAFE topics to the module for future trainings.