The Integration of Digital Tools During Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction

Book excerpt: The purpose of this chapter is to gain insight from the ways a group of elementary teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing chose to integrate digital tools into evidence-based writing instruction and the ways these technologies were used to support student learning. After professional development that exposed these teachers to twelve new digital tools, they were observed incorporating several new tools into their instruction; however, most of the tools were not the ones targeted during professional development. There are factors related to both teacher perspectives and professional development design that seem to play a role in what digital tools are used, how they are used, and who uses them. Based on these factors, suggestions are made for the design of future professional development that more effectively introduces technologies to teachers and supports their efforts to integrate these tools into classroom instruction. [This article appears as Chapter 30 in "Handbook of Research on Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings," a volume in the "Advances in Educational Technologies and Instructional Design (AETID) Book Series, edited by Rebecca S. Anderson and Clif Mims.].