Abstract

Students in today’s society encounter modern technologies on a daily basis, and these technologies now play a significant role in the majority of students’ lives. It has therefore become a challenge for teachers to bridge the gap between the technologies students use at home and those teachers use in the classroom. The purpose of this study is to explore whether the implementation of technology in the classroom curriculum relates to an increase in student engagement, motivation, and satisfaction. This study focuses on 21 fourth grade students and 20 high school science students attending two schools in central Illinois. Blogs, graphic websites, Prezi, and movie making technology tasks were integrated into classroom instruction to accompany class content. Following each of these technology tasks, survey data was collected from the students to measure how engaged, motivated, and satisfied students were with their learning. Results from these surveys indicated that students were more engaged, more motivated, and more satisfied when learning classroom content enhanced by technology. Conclusions were drawn from these results and recommendations for future studies are presented.