Week 18 - The role of Current and emerging technologies

In this post I will be using Gibbs cycle of reflection to consider how I have changed my use of technology since beginning my Mindlab journey.

Gibbs cycle of reflection

Description: At the beginning of the year I was giving the opportunity to have 1:1 iPads in my classroom. This presented me with the use of ICT, but as it says in the Supporting future-orientated learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective (Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Boyd, Bull, & Hipkins 2012) the use of this technology and its effectiveness "... is heavily dependent on educator's abilities to see the affordances and capacities of ICT...". In my practice I have often used technology as a substitution for paper activities. So I endeavoured to incorporate digital technology into my teaching to enable to students to develop 21st Century skills in the classroom.

Feelings: Previously in my teaching I was not confident at using digital technology effectively in the classroom. Throughout the Mindlab course and being a part of Manaiakalani Outreach programme it has equipped me with the skills and tools to use digital technology more effectively and teach students how to use digital technology to help them process what they learn and communicate their ideas.

Evaluation: After beginning to use more digital technology I can see the students more engaged, retaining their information more readily and becoming more confident at sharing their understanding of what they learnt. Having the set format to teach students how to use google suite, iPad apps to share their learning gives me the confidence to be able to integrate this more into my teaching. Parents have been supportive of the changes made and have even used some of the apps and tools we have learnt in class to help with the students learning at home e.g. pic collage, slides, notes on iPad. I feel that I could use the digital technology more to individualise students learning and to enable more collaborative work, in my implementation I have only done a little with collaborative writing. In Term 2 I would like to use more of the google suite and begin to take my students through using individual blogs to share their learning and reflections.

Analysis: These changes relate to the theme, firstly because it has required unbundling, in Supporting future-orientated learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective (Bolstad, et al., 2012) it refers to unbundling as "a process in which innovators deconstruct established structures and routines and reassemble them in newer, smarter ways". I have felt that I needed to do this with the implementation of technology in the classroom as I did not want to simply substitute my activities. I have had to consider how to incorporate technology to be an integral part of the learning. It has required to reflect on how best to teach my students to learn to process information, analyse what information is correct and to question how do we know, these are key to 21st Century learning as knowledge is readily available but not always accurate. The video Teaching in the 21st Century (Delafosse, 2011)  show how key it is teach skills in processing information, rather than absorbing it. Having the Manaiakalani Outreach programme that has cybersmart programme and teaches students and teachers how to use technology to share their learning has been helpful in beginning my journey in using digital technology.

Conclusion: I felt that I could have done more teaching around how to recognise if information and sources are accurate. I would have also liked to used technology to do more collaborative writing to help students with their writing (focus of my Digital and Collaborative initiative). I feel that I could use more tools like Kahoot to engage students in their learning. As I have yet to begin the teaching on how to use blogger this is going to be my next step in using digital technologies in the classroom. I feel like reflecting regularly on how I was implementing digital technologies would have helped me to be more effective, it would have also allowed for more accountability in progressing in my use of technology.

Action Plan: As stated above I would like to use more gamification and the tool blogger in my teaching. I feel these would ensure the my use of digital technology is effective, purposeful and develops 21st Century skills in my classroom. I feel I have not achieved my goal yet, but I know that with the tools I have I will be able to continue to make changes to my teaching. In the future I know as I progress using blogger in the classroom I will have to change the way I plan, construct lessons and individualise the learning. I am looking forward to seeing where the journey will take me and my students.

Reference

Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective. Report prepared for the Ministry of Education. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

Delafosse, S (2011) Teaching in the 21st Century [video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=075aWDdZUlM&t=321s