Coding is not a new idea in an educational setting. I recall my grade 9 teacher trying his best to teach us how to design code to move a two dimensional rocket across the screen of the brand new Apple 2C computers in our computer lab. Mind you, this was roughly 1986/87 and even the teacher was totally overwhelmed by this prospect. However, the message was the same as today; students will need to know how to do this to be successful in the future.
As for myself, I was not very successful at moving that rocket as I recall, but the exposure to those opportunities helped me and continue to help me as an educator and administrator. I have not directly taught coding but I do realize the importance of these skills. As we saw in the presentation last week and in the readings provided, there are many ways to access and practice these skills. In schools that I have been in, I witnessed the progress our school robotics team made every year, as they designed and programmed their division entries. The kits were provided by the school division so no financial issues ever prevented a team being assembled. The students were of a variety of ages, with senior members teaching younger students and one staff member,( not non techy me), helping whenever a technical question needed to be answered. These were huge opportunities for students that wanted a club that was a little more focused on technology. They took this very seriously, and competitions were intense.
From those experiences, I know of at least one student who has gone on to be nearing completion of his Electrical Engineering degree at the University of Saskatchewan. A huge success story.
Currently, I have one staff member,( there are only a handful of us in total), that directly teaches coding in her classes. They use a version of educational Minecraft to engage students and work on Math skills as well. The resources are easy to find and students find them to be extremely engaging. She uses this approach starting in grade 5.
At my age, I am still learning about how to move that rocket across the screen, just with far better technology, and now by a grade 5 student that tells me ” That’s too simple Mr. P.!”
This past week my group looked at assessment technologies that are becoming more and more prevalent in education. This was also an interesting way to look and reflect on my own assessment practices. Are we just crunching numbers and looking at data on a spreadsheet or are we actually using what we collect in a meaningful way; to help find ways to teach students?
As an administrator, I have to assess data all of the time to ensure my students are getting the best education possible, but there are times where the data does not tell the whole story and I believe this is the same with teachers and students. There is only so much that digital assessment can tell us. We still need to talk with students to see if there understandings go deeper than what is on the page or screen. Some students struggle to use technology but can orally express their knowledge successfully. Classroom settings can cause anxiety as well, so accommodating some students with one on one or quiet areas to work can foster learning for some.
My point is that tools like Kahoot and Socrative are just that; wonderful tools to assist in the assessment of students. They are merely one aspect of assessment, or one tool in the toolbox. Some teachers may become too reliant on this one tool and that is maybe the case for many of the different tools in this regard.
Being balanced in your practices is something that any teacher has ran into. The key is recognizing this and always evolving in this respect.
As assessment technologies become more popular in the classroom, it is important that we don’t allow them to dictate our assessment practices away from "good practice." Many digital assessment tools support practices such as multiple choice and true or false questions. Although these forms of assessment are easy to create and even easier to mark,... Continue Reading →
The societal view of how students learn within a classroom has not changed much over time. Fourteenth century illustrations depict a professor at the front of the room while students sit within a space and listen. If we entered a classroom today, we would likely find a classroom that is organized like this. However, the way the material is shared, and the type of learning has changed. I am going to unpack how the internet has influenced how students learn.
Before search engines existed much of the content that was taught in schools revolved around information that was gathered from textbooks. New findings would often take time to make their mark in the world of education as it took time to write and publish the books in which students would learn from. In a way, students were always learning old information. Education during this time placed strong emphasis on reading, memorization, and being able to articulate the information that students were learning in their own words. It was fact based, forcing students to be able to regurgitate information in exams or assignments to prove their understanding of the material.
The introduction of Web 1.0 would also bring with it changes in how information was gathered for the world of education. The first generation of web pages allowed users to search for information and read about it. The owners of these pages would be responsible for updating the information on their pages. These early pages had been referred to as garbage dumps of information. The goal of these sites was to provide users with as much information as possible, often meaning that they were poorly formatted due to inadequate design. However, this provided a much quicker stream for information to be shared than books or encyclopedias. Web 1.0 also allowed educators to connect with students through online mail. This provided the opportunity for teachers to communicate with students in different areas or even other countries.
Web 2.0 advancements in the internet would open the door for collaboration. Improved web design created an opportunity for more people to share their knowledge. Blogs, podcasts, social media to name a few gave people a platform to communicate with the rest of the world. People were able to comment on, listen, and view information rather than write and view read-only material. In the world of education, applications such as Google, Skype, Zoom, Wici pages, and Cloud based document sharing came into play. This presented teachers the option to connect with their students virtually, share information through online platforms, and gave students the option to work collaboratively on assignments at school or from home. Teachers could also place more emphasis on their students to take control of their learning since information was more readily available to them. Additionally, the way that students could provide evidence of their learning also changed. For example, rather than writing an exam on the current topic of study, students could collaborate with other classmates to create a multimedia presentation outlining their learning, and work on it collaboratively from home.
Web 3.0 proposes an interesting shift to a world outside of our own. Advancements such as virtual reality may play a key role in providing learners the opportunity to experience things hands on while still being in the classroom. The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may provide students the ability to get extra help outside of the classroom, acting as their personal tutor directly related to the material they are learning in school. Teachers can also utilize AI to plan their lessons, adapt material for students, and provide different options for content delivery. In addition, information is available faster than ever and it is essentially accessible from anywhere. This forces teachers to move beyond read and memorize forms of teaching and encourages them to get students to apply their knowledge in different ways.
Photo by Jessica Lewis ud83eudd8b thepaintedsquare on Pexels.com
With all great advancements there are always areas of concern. While the world of Web 3.0 sounds exciting and intriguing. We need to realize that the introduction of Web 3.0 may also be furthering the digital divide that exists within many of our communities. Not all families are able to afford internet packages, let alone a device that allows them to connect. If education is to change as fast as the internet is expanding many students and school divisions may begin to feel the impacts. The lack of funding is going to be one of the largest barriers that education is going to face. Until all students have equal access to technology, the use of these advancements will never be fair. Secondly, the introduction of AI poses a huge risk to the integrity of our education systems. Students can generate written assignments with the click of a button. This makes extra work for educators to ensure that the assignments their students are handing in are legitimate and not AI created. I believe this race between AI and counter AI will be a continual battle, with new platforms reaching the internet on a consistent basis.
As many of us in this class know, COVID accelerated the rate at which many of us integrated online teaching into our careers. There was a mad scramble to create an efficient, EFFECTIVE way to help our students continue to receive an education during a very uncertain period of our lives. There were mistakes made; trial and error, and plenty of frustration for teachers, parents and students. This class helps us to reflect back on the technologies that worked well, and maybe the odd one that frustrated us.
I was a little luckier than some, since in the year previous to the pandemic, I had been given the opportunity to attend PD on technology for educational use. I spent time at a Google Summit in Saskatoon that introduced me to Google Classroom. After that week, I was convinced that this was the way to make education more accessible, and I worked for weeks to set up my online classrooms. They were always evolving, and still are. I have continued to use them in the right situations and I found it depended on the group of students that I would be teaching.
I also added other technologies to my classroom. Kahoot was an app that I tried and I occasionally used it over the years. This year, however, there has been less of an opportunity with the new cell phone policy in place in Saskatchewan. We can use some of these technologies with Chrome books, however, not every classroom has access to that technology either. This is one disadvantage some schools have when it comes to online use of technology.
In my experience there are some limitations to the use of online learning, other than the fact that parts of the province where Wi-Fi is limited. The fact is that many students do not do well in an asynchronous class. Even during Covid, I set up online scheduled meetings for my classes, taught with the use of technology, and still had a low level of success. Our provincial online learning program, the Sask DLC , offers students a wide variety of classes, but since it began a couple of years ago, only 70% of the students I signed up for classes successfully completed their courses. Students that need direct, one on one, instruction are not successful.
It is vital that educators can adapt to the needs of their learners from class to class, and year to year. This means reflection is an important aspect of education and should be ongoing throughout the year so that the appropriate adjustments can be made. There is no one size fits all answer for how a class should be taught or how information should be presented. Therefore, it is a valuable skill for educators to be able to intertwine multiple teaching strategies within their lessons and determine which ones work best for their individual learners. It is important to note that the teaching strategies chosen by teachers often correlates to their own teaching philosophy, which aligns with the theories of knowledge. Reflecting on my own teaching philosophy I can identify with both the constructivism and connectivism theories of knowledge.
Within the constructivism theory, a main focus is thinking and reflecting. Many of the classes that I teach are subjective, different from science or math. There is opportunity for open discussion and space for students to defend their way of thinking. This process encourages students to bring their prior knowledge with them, reflect on their ways of thinking, and test their ideas through social interaction. I utilize group work and projects with fairly open guidelines to allow students the opportunity to express their learning in different ways while also providing students the opportunity to learn from one another.
The second theory that I had identified was connectivism. Siemens states that within the connectivism theory the capacity to know is much more important than what is known. With the internet almost always readily available to students today, it is important that they understand how to read through the information that they are learning and develop a strong digital awareness. The internet also enhances opportunities within the classroom for self-directed study. Many of the curriculums within Saskatchewan have developed outcomes to encourage students to further their learning within classes based on personal interest. Personally, whenever possible I utilize directed studies. This allows students the freedom to choose a topic of their interest under a guiding question or prompt that I give to them. Furthering their research abilities, while also giving them the opportunity to learn about something they have personally chosen. Connectivism also follows the idea that learning and knowledge rests in the diversity of opinions. Technology not only provides students the opportunity to express their work in multiple different ways, it also gives them the option to learn in different ways. For example, some students prefer to watch videos over reading.
Towards the beginning of my career the ideas of connectivism and constructivism were overshadowed by objectivism. The objectivism approach focuses on students being able to comprehend, replicate and justify their answers. My lessons were focused more on objective reasoning, rather than personal opinions. I believe this shift occurred as the classes that I was teaching changed. Moving from mathematics and social sciences to physical education and wildlife studies. Not to say that connectivism and constructivism approaches are not applicable in all classes, however, they are easier to integrate in some more than others.
Over a career, most educators evolve with what works at the time, the subject they teach and the group of students that they teach to. The first word my father-in-law told me to remember when I told him I was going into Education, was “adaptability”. This came from a retired ex-teacher, with 35 years of experience. By the time I reached university as a TC or teacher canditate, I knew how valuable that advice was. This was where I realized the value of students needing to buy in to what we are trying to teach in order for it to be effective teaching. In my opinion, my strongest belief is in the constructionist philosophy. I enjoy designing inquiry projects that allow students to go in directions that interest them. This, I find, not only helps with engagement, but also goes a long way to helping students reach complex thought, where they can express to me what they have learned in a wide variety of ways.
This does not mean that there are not aspects of my teaching that do not represent other philosophies. Any teacher of math or science knows that there are times for lectures, formulas , and equations that have to taught in this objectivist view.
The point I am trying to make is that each teacher probably has one main view and then likely has areas of their teaching in which other philosophies are more prevalent.
As we head into more new technology every month, it seems, this may alter some teacher’s views on how students learn and therefore how we teach. AI is a perfect example, Constructivists, like myself, see this tech as an opportunity to see how students use it if they are taught how to properly. This is similar to when computers came into schools. Now, they are invaluable.
When I first thought about educational technology, I naturally came up with things like chromebooks, Smartboards, and computer labs. My second level of thinking then went to Google Classroom, which I have used in my teaching practise for several years and other related technologies. I also think of things like alternate seating, fidgets, and noise cancelling headsets as technology that help the learning process.This is where I sort of stopped, until I read the readings for this week. It never dawned on me that the chalk board was innovative for the time and made learning easier for students to learn, or for that matter, how written language was a major leap in education.
In today’s society, I believe most people think of educational technology as computers, cell phones,( which are now a hot topic), and online speakers that come into the classroom as a few examples. This is becoming more contraversial as the trend in education, it seems, is to be going back to basics. All you hear about is ” Why are we not teaching the 3 R’s instead of all of this other stuff?” This is the divide in education. Even if we know that technology can help students, as we read this week, there is a tradeoff. Where we gain in one area, students will loose in another.
As a person who joined education a little later in life than most, I have had to change my thoughts on technology a little more drastically than most. I went to school in the 1970’s and 80’s, so I can recall the first computers that came into school. For me, it was the Commodore 64, moving a white dot across the t.v. screen. Everyone was in awe. Then we shifted to high school and the Apple 2C and the programming we had to design to get a two dimesional rocket to go across their own monitor. The internet was introduced just as I graduated, and th it exponential growth to where we are now. I had to grow with it and quickly if I was going to become an educator just a few short years ago. Now with AI and all that this could bring us, we are set for more massive growth. Maybe soon, teachers themselves will become outdated, just like the Commodore 64?
How can we define educational technology? Well, two words. One being educational and the other technology. Merriam-webster defines "educational" as: "the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools" and "technology" as: "the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area." So, if we were to put those two... Continue Reading →
