Hello, and welcome to my blog for my ECI 833 course where I will explore the foundations of educational technology. Educational technology is a tool, invention computer hardware or software, manipulative or theory that helps facilitate learning. Personally, I view it as any tool that helps me teach in an innovative way to increase engagement and learning or a tool to help support my students more efficiently in their journey of education. What I realized was in my first few years of teaching the tools or assessments I chose were solely to engage and benefit my students learning, which is great but I did not focus at all on how to save time for myself. Most days began working at 8 am and finishing work at 10 pm. I had no work life balance.

In my tenth year of teaching, I am slowly trying to balance making my classroom a fun place to learn but as well finding educational technology that can adapt my content more efficiently for differentiation and assessing more quickly to have a personal life. I have become very interested in instant feedback assessment. Jiajun Zou from Emory University explains self marking programs have helped teachers gain their lives back with the growing responsibilities they have these days, as well as aiding students in the learning process. With out timely feedback “students can easily forget what they just wrote, and their brain instantly switches to other important tasks or seeks a drink as a reward for their hard work. Without instant feedback, ideas fade”.  I have experienced students telling me that they don’t remember this assessment. So it feels pointless to review it; it feels like reteaching without a purpose. Instant feedback is especially important in formative assessment so students can improve before summative assessment time. Automated mediums Audience Response Systems such as mentimeter and blooket are a great way to help students know how they are doing and facilitate fun and enjoyment in the classroom.

There are some issues with some of the instant marking or feedback programs I have been using for summative assessment. I first started using google forms with multiple choice questions and zip grade. I am becoming aware that these tools benefit me but not my students when it comes to higher level or deeper learning. My questioning in the assessments became more knowledge and recall based rather than analyzation of the content.  I can’t seem to find assessment technology that benefits both the teacher and the students quite yet. Neil Postman explains how only certain groups will benefit from new technological tools or advances in certain industries. It even goes onto say about how some groups could be harmed. My students are being “harmed” in sense of not being assessed in a way that helps them be critical thinkers and on the flip side it takes me hours to assess high level of analyzation questions which in turn keeps me working many long hours.

Hack education explained in regards to automated essay grading, they disagreed with the idea that instant feedback benefits learning.  Even though I disagree in some aspects, I see the importance of the critiquing these automated feedback tools.

Neil Postman confirmed for me that it is very important to be critical of new technology. There will be some people that will benefit and some that won’t. There will be advantages but also detriments to people. When new technology becomes the norm and is no longer looked at with a critical lens, this is dangerous. I will keep researching and reflecting on technology I choose and hopefully someday I will discover educational tools that develop student learning and help me do my job efficiently and yet thoroughly.