Technology Integration 101 – The Theory Behind WELES

Encouraging educators to reflect on lessons, activities, and strategies they are familiar with and that have worked well in the past helps them adopt new technologies. By using an existing repertoire of successful assignments, projects, and activities from their tool kit, educators have enough familiarity with old procedures to ensure a successful instructional outcome when applying new technologies.

Continuing to experiment with technologies in steps encourages educators to include technology resources as a regular and continuing part of instruction rather than as rare, anecdotal experiences. The first step is to encourage educators to think about successful instruction, current resources, and how technology can be comfortably integrated into those successful lessons. This process of reflection allows for the building of logical movement toward change and adoption. WELES is designed to introduce technology innovations through methods and terms with which educators are already familiar, and had experienced success. It is important that the model guide educators slowly since they are more likely to incorporate innovations a little at a time until they became comfortable with the innovation.

Let’s take a look at how the WELES model works.