Reflecting Upon Teaching With Technology

The following post was written as a reflection on my learning during the fifth and final week of a Teaching with Technology course I am taking as I pursue a master's degree in educational technology leadership.

As an educator, I am quite opposed to the word "stupid" when referring to a person. And yet, as we wrap up our Teaching with Technology course, a repurposed political phrase is circulating in my head. "It's the learning and assessment, stupid."

I do not really think our leaders are stupid, but I do think they have missed the point for quite some time. For years, we have been trying to get teachers to use more technology, to not let those computers in their classrooms collect dust. All the while also building the climate of high-stakes standardized testing, which says every child will perform at an expected minimum level on tests presented in the same medium to everyone.

So, as James Paul Gee says in his Edutopia video Grading with Games, schools have become "test-prep academies" where it is too risky to use digital tools like games and social networking to teach because they don't have enough "skill and drill" focus which is what helps students pass standardized tests. The computer, which could be helping differentiate instruction, often becomes an expensive tool for drill and practice. The potential for true transformation in the classroom is wasted. We have a dichotomy in place where we know what kind of learning is most beneficial for preparing 21st Century students for the world of today, but our schools are still judged on how well they prepare students for the 20th Century.

What is the answer? How about lessening the importance of THE TEST and increasing the importance of real world problem solving? This Vision for 21st Century Learning video was intriguing to me, as it shows a possibility for authentic learning and assessment through simulations which would connect students to the ancient world.

But I am just one person. I cannot institute on my own the paradigm shifts required to make 21st Century learning and authentic assessment a reality in today's classrooms. Unless I redefine paradigm shift. An entire educational system can make a paradigm shift. So can a person. Maybe for now, until Gee's modern Sputnik comes along to spur the overhaul of education that is needed, I can focus on helping individual teachers move toward constructivist and connectivist practices. I can show them how technology can support them and their students in these new endeavors. We actually made our drop in the bucket this school year by starting a Moodle initiative. At least five classrooms I'm aware of are now experiencing blended learning environments. The word is getting out and more teachers want to try.

My own mini-paradigm shift because of this course has been toward concentrating on teaching, not technology. For the sake of some test-prep academies I know and love, I'm going to look for ways to sneak the good practices in. Then, hopefully, when the change really does come, we'll have teachers ready and waiting to lead us in 21st Century learning - because they've already been there.

Designing Student-Centered Learning Experiences With Technolgy

This content below is written as a reflection on what I learned in week four of the Teaching with Technology course I am taking as I pursue a master's degree in educational technology leadership.

The two themes that stood out the most for me during Week 4 of Teaching With Technology were "cooperative/collaborative learning" and "contextual/situational learning".

After working together to design an action plan for helping a teacher teach with technology, the project group I belong to started creating and uploading lesson plans and resources like crazy! It has been stressful trying to get everything in place in time to meet deadlines, but extremely rewarding as well. Something that became evident to me as I was working with my team was the fact that I was experiencing cooperative/collaborative learning at the same time that I was reading about it. As a teacher I have asked students to cooperatively complete assignments and projects over the years, and I have been on many collaborative teams. I have not ever, that I can recall, worked on a team that was somewhat separated by distance, however. I worked with three very dedicated people, so it was a rewarding experience for me. I found that I love learning "across space"! I also reached out to my "extended cooperative network" for ideas via Twitter. At one point I was at a loss for how to approach loading our files to our Google website, so I sent a message via Twitter, and within minutes, five people had sent me suggestions. The power of cooperative learning, or as Pitler et. al. (2007) quotes Wong and Wong (1998) on page 143 of Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works, "cooperating to learn", was demonstrated for me in a real and immediately applicable way. I was then able to turn around the knoweldge I gained for the benefit of my project group. This is an experience I could not have had even six months ago, before I came to know the usefulness of Twitter as a networking for learning tool. This transitions me nicely to my second learning theme for this week.

In Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools, Solomon and Schrum (2007) write on page 103: "Lave (1998) suggests that most learning occurs naturally through activities, contexts, and cultures, but schools too often abstract learning, 'unsituate' it, and teach concepts removed from natural contexts and applications." They go on to say a little further down the page: "We often provide 'just in case' training rather than 'just in time' training, which provides educators with the information they need just as they need it." These words literally jumped off the page at me. The authors reference several times in this chapter the fact that even after years of investment in training and infrastructure, educational technology has not lived up to its potential in the majority of schools. I find these observations echoed in many of the educational technology blogs I read, such as this one. Although I don't entirely agree with the blog author's take on his colleagues and their lack of technology savvy, I do understand his frustration. After all of the professional development reading I've done in my coursework, I would argue, however, that the failure of educational technology to reach the heights we should have expected by now lies not with teachers for the most part, but with the way we've tried to train them, in hour-long or even day-long workshops using traditional "chalk and talk" or "spray and pray" methods (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p. 101). I am now beginning to make connections to the need to use connective Web 2.0 technologies in staff development to stay in touch with and continuously support educators and their growth in the use of educational technology. The support will work on two levels; educators can ask for help when they need it and receive consistent feedback, and they can become proficient in the use of the tools because they'll be using them in context. My own experience of becoming more of a participant in blogging and personal learning networks (PLNs) is evidence of the benefits of contextual/situational learning. I became a blogger because my graduate classes asked me to blog and reflect, and I became a PLN participant because someone in a workshop gave me an opportunity to participate immediately in a PLN. I am excited by these personal discoveries, reinforced by our professional readings this week, and look forward to hopefully creating similarly meaningful opportunities and experiences for the teachers in my district.

Planning for Student Centered Learning With Technology

The following was written as a reflection on my learning in week three of the Teaching with Technology course I am taking as I work toward a master's degree in educational technology leadership.

This was a content-packed week in our Teaching With Technology course, and although I have been working consistently on the coursework, I find myself finalizing my assignments just under the wire of the no-penalty grace period. I am tired, but not discouraged, as there have been many important learning moments for me over the course of the last seven days.

The first theme I encountered this week is that of planning for instruction and the needs of learners first, and then planning to use technology if it will help address learner's needs. Fortunately, in most cases, technology does make indvidualzation and instructional support more possible than ever before. One example that stood out to me was from the book Web 2.0 New Tools, New Schools by Solomon & Schrum (2007). On pages 92- 93 Christopher Johnston writes in a sidebar about using a blog in math to help students articulate their problem-solving strategies on a new problem posted each week. One of the issues faced in math education is the rote memorization of procedures without understanding of the "whys" behind the steps. I thought the use of a math blog to help students solidify their understanding was a brilliant idea, and an excellent example of using technology for an authentic purpose rather than just using a blog for the sake of blogging itself. This was just one of many examples of incorporating technology in classrooms when and where it makes sense, and it gives me food for thought about how we might need to tweak staff development opportunities in our district, so we are emphasizing the "why" of technology integration more than "how-to" of using technology.

Planning for instruction and the needs of learners was the major emphasis of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles I learned this week through readings, UDL lesson plan design, and creation of an online book using the UDL Book Builder. The in-depth work we did with applying UDL principles to a complete lesson plan design helped me for the first time to get my head around the essence and practical applications of UDL - the "how-to" of meeting the needs of the diverse learners in today's K-12 classrooms. Again, meeting those learner needs is more possible than ever before because of the wide range of technology tools we have at our disposal for delivering content in multiple formats and giving students diverse choices for demonstrating their learning.

As I read in Chapter 6 of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning (Rose & Meyer, 2002) about addressing the three identified UDL brain networks - the recognition network (the what of learning), the strategic network (the how of learning), and the affective network (the why of learning) - and then had to make sure I addressed them in the development of a lesson plan, I made a connection back to the 14 Learner-Centered Psychological Principles which we were introduced to and had to apply in our Curriculum Management course. In both systems, educators are encouraged to put the needs of the learner or learners above everything else, and then design instruction and activities around those needs while keeping in mind methodologies that will engage the learner on multiple "fronts" of cognition. I think that the UDL model is easier to keep in mind when planning, since it includes only three networks and many of the strategies for addressing the networks are similar or overlap. Making the connection, though, made me realize that although I am not in the K-12 classroom, I am still a teacher of teachers when I develop staff development, and just as I was able to address the 14 Learner-Centered Psychological Principles in designing staff development for our Curriculum Management course, I can also use UDL principles in designing effective staff development experiences for teachers. I look forward to being able to apply these principles in real-life very soon.