During the Monday night presentation, Ayushi, Gage, and Mohammad asked a thought provoking question regarding the use of productivity suites. They asked whether we felt the use of these software programs enhanced creativity or suppressed it. It took me a long time to answer and I continued to think about this question throughout the evening.  While I do believe some aspects of the productivity suites do foster creativity, I also think they have worked against creativity in many ways. Productivity suites are better suited to preparing young adults for certain aspects of the work, there are gaps in many areas not filled by the productivity suites.

First of all, we’ve reached a point where the productivity suites are simply embedded in each of the academic subjects and their use is no longer explicitly taught. No longer do students spend time learning how to word process, create formulas in excel spreadsheets, and learn additional features in word processing or presentation software. I have witnessed this over the past decade with the removal of computer labs and introduction of chromebooks and carts. While more work than ever is completed on a laptop, there is less intention than ever on its basic uses. Students struggle to type more than 15-20 words per minute. Students struggle to use any features in Microsoft excel, Apple numbers, or Google sheets. Students struggle to design anything creative in word processing and presentation software. I often wonder if this is more attuned to apathy and our own focus on the outcomes rather than the overall presentation of their products or if this is a product of a lack of explicit instruction to their use. Perhaps, a combination of both. 

The productivity suites have increased creativity in a number of ways. The ability to collaborate with the cloud based documents have allowed students to work together and share their ideas. These programs have increased their capabilities and the speed at which they can process information to make working on them more seamless. These programs provide quite a few opportunities for students to be creative, if they choose. 

Productivity suites have decreased creativity in a number of ways. Gone are the days of doodling in the margins of a notebook or honing your cursive skills. Even for myself, my penmanship has decreased and word processing software has become a neat means to an end. Canva and other programs have decreased my creative skills in the sense that most of the creations are made via pre-set templates that I simply plug the information into. 

Productivity suites have prepared students for the workforce by allowing them to create simple documents, prepare presentations, and digitally collaborate with their peers. The vast majority of careers today require basic computer skills. Those careers which require a more advantage skill set will either 

Productivity suites have created gaps due to our lack of explicit teaching and the increase of other third party software apps that are better suited for many tasks. Products like Prezi and Canva have become as commonplace in my school setting as our Google or Microsoft programs. These thor party programs foster creativity much more than the standard productivity suites we use.

I’m constantly torn with what I feel are the most effective strategies for teaching students and the methods in which students should be showcasing what they have learned. As a History teacher, I want students to be able to memorize facts, understand how the events of history are connected, and how those events and decisions impact our world today. I want students to memorize facts as that seems to be a skill that is disappearing with the ability to search for basic info with a moment’s notice. Some may argue that if something can be “Googled” in seconds that it isn’t worth remembering, but our brains have a fairly significant storage size. Being able to recall information exercises your brain and also comes in handy for any future trivia nights or Jeopardy appearances. 

While reading through The Nature of Knowledge and Implications for Teaching, I felt my teaching style follows cognitivism fairly closely. Cognitivism, for the most part, follows the philosophy of internalizing new information and making assumptions and decisions based on the combination of prior knowledge and the new information. Memorizing names, events, dates and what happened in the past allows students to take that prior knowledge and apply it when given information about current events. 

When I coach volleyball, applying Bloom’s taxonomy and cognitivism comes more naturally. Players are put in situations constantly where they need to analyze the game situation, other’s emotion and abilities, and make a decision. These decisions require athletes to understand their own ability to execute a skill and when to take a risk or play it safe. The game of volleyball is a great example since there is no clock to kill and teams must work together as a unit to earn every point by identifying their strengths, their opponents weaknesses, and use all available information to make a decision. Less skilled teams who understand how the other team is set up and how to be deceptive consistently beat more skilled teams. 

Over my teaching career, spanning a quick 12 years, my course content has changed little, but delivery and purpose has changed significantly. The more I coach, the more I try to emulate that in the classroom. The shift from binders and photocopiers to Chromebooks and Google Classroom has been a welcome change in the sense of organization and class presentation. I’ve now shifted to trying to provide the information and having students analyze why the decisions were made in the past, how the people were impacted, how they responded, and whether the decisions made could be justified. With the polarization of politics today, it’s important that students can critique the information they are seeing and make a decision that’s in the best interests of society. 

Educational technology is an ever evolving tool which has been introduced as an innovative way to improve education for centuries. My understanding and experience with educational technology has largely changed over the past five years with the increased use of Google Classroom and Chromebooks. During my school experience, and the first half of my career, technology was clunky, largely unavailable, and Microsoft/Windows based. A group of 25-30 computers were available for the entire rural school and teachers took turns booking the computer lab. Further, projectors and tvs with connections to computers have replaced the tv carts, which too, were available in a similar manner to a computer lab. I am nostalgic thinking of the excitement of seeing the tv cart being rolled into the classroom as a youngster. That’s a thrill only those born in the 80s and 90s recall. 

Over the past five years, Rouleau School has been 1:1 with each student having access to a Chromebook in the Grade 3-12 class and iPads in the Kindergarten to Grade 2 class. This has been a dramatic shift in our 7-12 classrooms as teachers organize and deliver all content through Google Classroom. While convenient, it has had some unexpected results. Students attendance has decreased as material is available on the Google classroom and it has become a crutch for the urgency to attend class. Again, mixed feelings as those who are away for excused absences are able to work on their material while away. Further, we have struggled with students accessing Artificial Intelligence sites like ChapGPT to complete their work for them. Although it’s great that they have learned to use these tools, we have noticed some academic misconduct through their use. After these five years, my thoughts on the effectiveness of  academic technology ebb and flow daily. 

Based on my experience as a teacher, administrator, and now parent, my understanding of educational technology has evolved. Through Neil Postman’s (1998) writing on five ideas about technological change, I surmise a contemporary definition of education technology is something that is added to classrooms and adapted to, not adapted for. Each of these educational technologies, from the time of written language to the widespread use of Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, and personal devices has completely reshaped how students are taught and show evidence of their learning. In many ways, we have enhanced education by with technological changes likes robotics courses, computer science classes, and other hands-on technology for Practical and Applied Arts courses. In many ways though, we have stopped teaching simple computer skills (typing, document organization, spreadsheet skills), and simply moved courses online. Lastly, distance education through the Saskatchewan Distance Learning Centre has opened opportunities for many students to take courses they wouldn’t otherwise have, but has reduced the amount of time students spend face to face with a teacher and their peers. For every positive, there are drawbacks. 

Postman, N. (1998) Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change.

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