Using Technology in Learning

Steve Jobs saw technology as an extension of the "person".  With this platform of understanding, he realized that people needed forms of technology that were easy to use, that made people want to feel, laugh, smile, create memories and capture it.  Technology in other words, would allow people to see and experience the world differently, not to lose the experience, but to enhance it. This, from its root, is what technology should be in learning: the enhancement of the learning experience.  But many teachers including myself may not be enhancing our students education by integrating technology in its most effective ways.  This has really made me have to consider how and in what ways I use technology in the classroom.  The evaluating question I now find myself pondering is "Are the ways I integrate technology in the classroom enhancing my students learning, the self, and their experience in education?

There is a lot of discussion about using technology in classrooms because it  somewhat meets our students digital language, and more importantly, it will be an integral part of their lives in the future.  Many students walk into my Information Technology class already far more advanced than most of the educators in the school.  So then lies the question, if many of my students are more knowledgeable in areas of technology than their teachers, what are we really teaching them about technology?  Many of my projects restricted the technology and  its use primarily for  presentations (Powerpoint, Prezi, Popplet, Imovie, Keynote), Portfolio's (Weebly, Freshgrade, Wix, Evernote, Schoology), for retrieving information (google, yahoo, etc, blogs) and for files,sharing and communication (email, Edmodo).  I might introduce my students to all these different tools, and it might be new to them at the time, but I do not believe I am truly inspiring change or enhancing their educational process by introducing them to these tools so that they are better students.  My students can easily manipulate technology, because that is what these software companies do.  They would not create software that are too intricate for our lives because most of us would never use them. Now if my students' manipulation of these tools are that easy, are they really learning from them. If the software is easy to use (basic) then we as consumers will continue to use that software that we have become accustomed to thus closing our horizons to different opportunities.

Now, I have to admit, I do not feel like I am inspiring students with they way I ask them to use technology in the classroom.  Sometimes they want to make Apps or other times they may want to create music, but most of the time they are using the technology in a dull and somewhat monotonous way that I have prescribed for them.  Beyond this, many teachers believe they are doing a good job with integrating technology in the classroom because they use overhead projectors and presentation software.  Even though this may be a start, powerpoint presentations are not overly inspiring.  When I listen to lectures or lessons, what becomes inspiring is the person who teaches it.  I see myself as a very passionate, interactive and engaging lecturer but I find that even though my students love using computers, they don't seem to be inspired to change the world with computers.

One inspiring way I have seen technology enhance student learning was watching a student in our Learning Skills class use Dragon Naturally Speaking to write papers and learn how to read and write at the same time.  But the most inspiring use of technology I saw was during my teacher education program.  We visited a school that had a young girl who had learning and physical exceptionalities.  She had a computer connected to here wheelchair and through the use of technology she was able to share her thoughts, ideas, and understandings that allowed her to communicate with her classmates.  The technology definitely enhanced her learning experience but it also inspired me and everyone around her to realize that she was not different from us.  She made jokes, she was quick in her replies to questions and her human capacity was endless.  Reflecting on that situation and my teaching practice, for the next school year I have decided that:

- If I am going to use technology, it will have be in a meaningful way besides homework, essays and class projects.

-  The use of technology will only take place when we are doing something to inspire or change how we view life and its experience.

- I will use classroom websites, and blogs to give them access to classroom material.

- If they are going to integrate technology in their work, it will have to be in a meaningful way, not just as a presentation or to take notes.  Eg. Skype with guest speakers and other students from around the world.

- Teach them that technology does not only change the way we access and interpret knowledge, but it changes where we can learn as well.

- Take them on field trips to inspire them to show how technology affects all facets and areas of society.

- Teach them Digital citizenship is the most important thing when using technology and the internet.

The funny thing about teaching students about technology is that most of the tools we use now will be upgraded, changed or become obsolete over time.  So the most important thing we can teach our students  is technology is an extension of who they are, but their capabilities are endless because of the human capacity to create. 

My Flipped Classroom Experience

When I entered my Graduate Program that looked at Integrating Technology in the Digital Age Classroom, I wanted to focus on The Flipped Classroom Model.  I had started hearing about it on Twitter and one of my educating Mentors (Darren Yung or @penpoe) suggested it would be a great model to study.  I spent almost two years integrating this model in my classroom, and saw a lot of success and failures along the way.  The one thing that stood out for me was the overall assumption that what I was doing in my class was better for my students, even though for my most vulnerable students it was not.  

My teacher colleague and I had done all the preset work in showing our students our model, having them work with it for the first couple weeks of our school start up and having all our videos, assignments, web-links and other curricular modules and units online and ready to go.  We had coached them through our practice and expectations and they were ready and motivated to try our new challenges.  It even worked well for the first couple of weeks at the start of the school year.  But as the semester continued, my most vulnerable students began to fall of the charts.  I started to notice this when they came to class ill prepared to work on the in-class, hand's on, teacher-facilitated  or student guided projects.  Though some of my most vulnerable students are amazing with technology and their social media skills are something to envy, they felt even more dis-advantaged when they came to class.  Their problems did not lie with access to technology, their struggles were in their learning processes.

I thought by integrating technology in the classroom they would feel more engaged, but asking them to be engaged listening to a lecture or video at home was not working for them.  Within my face to face classroom interactions, I have informal brain breaks!  Sometimes they are discussions about something that is happening in the world, a story, something to do with sports, but it is a break that gives my most vulnerable students a chance to relax and ease their anxiety to all the content-loaded information I shoveled into their brains. The other thing I assumed is that they had the skills to listen to the lecture at home, gain the knowledge and be able to come to class and somewhat apply, analyze and synthesize it.  I gave my students every possibility to contact me whether through my website, email or twitter if they did not understand a definition, concept or section in the video, but many of them just went through the process of watching the lectures.

Now the students who became disengaged because they did not watch the lectures/videos for whatever reason came to school with the anxiety and fear that I could tell they did not watch the video and that would affect their overall mark.  The were also behind the students that watched the videos and that was obvious when after a short recap at the beginning of the class, they went into their groups and started working on their project based learning assignments and they did not know what to do.  What was even worst, my passion for this new style of learning scared these vulnerable children into expressing any concerns they were having with their learning experiences and my teaching practice.  It wasn't until about a month into a semester, a student came to me and said "Mr. Headley, I know most of the class likes this new style, but I don't and I don't feel like I am learning anything.  Through my passion and  excitement, I had forgot that there were a lot of diverse learners who don't learn like the status quo.  Somewhere in my mind I thought the technology might have bridged the gap, but it made it even worse.  I also did not realize that the student felt even more insecure and ashamed every-time the came to class unprepared.

I still use technology a lot in my classrooms, but and my website is more of an accessory or supplement to keep students up to date if they have missed classes or are out of town and want to state current with what we are doing in class.  If I was to implement a flipped classroom model again these are things I would be concerned with:

1. Making sure students have access to technology.  Talk to librarians, homework club teachers, and Learning support teachers and share with them your model.  Beyond this, explain to them that their students may need to use the computer in the classroom during scheduled times to get up to date.
2. Make sure you teach students to learn with technology.  I know many can do it on their own, but most of our vulnerable students use it as a recreational tool, and we need to create the mindshift of technology being a learning tool.
3. Be careful how much they have to do at home.  When students, especially at the high-school, level are going home and having to complete hours of homework, you adding more lectures to their homework time does not help.
4. Make sure all students are comfortable with learning using this new format.  Just because you want to try something new does not mean your students have to be guinea pigs.  There learning comes first and foremost.
5. Be fair, know that technology does not work all the time, so students may not be able to access it all time, so do not hold it against them.
6. Understand that in most of their other classes they will be taught in a more traditional method, so they may resist your model, and that is OK!
7. Make sure you have people you can collaborate with, and people who are implementing it at the same time so you can share, challenge, question and adapt your flipped classroom practices to meet your students needs.

Digital Citizenship and Racism

There are a lot of articles that discuss integrating technology in the classroom and digital citizenship, and though many of these articles look at utilizing technology in a positive way in the classroom, many do not discuss issues such as racism in social media.  For the most part, my students have been taught about digital citizenship by other teachers, including myself.  Nonetheless, the amount of students being disciplined for cyber-bullying and inappropriate use of technology is growing.  Beyond this, many of my students drop racial slurs in the hallway with their friends on a consistent basis.  I talk to them about the derogatory terms they use and try to enlighten them about the historical viciousness of these words, but on Twitter and Facebook, there are a lot of young individuals using those same terms to describe situations. 

Over the last couple of years we have seen star athletes and scholarship recipients losing their scholarships for the negative, derogatory, and racist comments they have said.  Even living in a diverse city like Surrey, cultural sensitivity at times can be lost in the community, in our homes, but even worse, in our schools. The problem with technology is that if these students feel the need to use this vernacular in their discourse, they will also use it online as well. The beauty of social media is that it connects users together and we can share information instantly.  There are positives to this process, but also negatives.  I hear a lot of teachers asking other educators to show students how to positively use the internet, social media, and other technological tools, but understand for our students we are a very small and limited fraction of the audience they want to interact with.  Students will always digital citizenship rules when interacting with their teacher. So students, if having to use twitter to hand in assignments or schoolwork rarely use their personal profile. They will create new profiles to share their classwork, which is great, but this a un-authentic portion of their online identity because they are interacting with their teacher. What they do with their personal account is where the true issues arise. 

If you were to search #nigger #nigga #spic #terrorist or any other derogatory terms, you will see a multitude of people using that vernacular on their online discussions.  About a month ago, rapper Joe Budden took a picture of a Sikh man at the airport and put it on instagram with the caption "not on my watch, homeboy". And though the beauty of the lesson is that Joe Budden apologized after being called out by some followers and even being taught about the difference between someone who follows the Islamic Faith, and some who follow the Sikh Faith. He had already did the damage as many of his initial followers thought it was quite humorous.  It is that type of ignorance that continues to fuel segregation and hate amongst each other instead of bringing us closer together.  To show you another example, around the holiday season there was a discussion about whether schools should or should not have Christmas concerts?  The responses from students and parents alike was shocking.  Parents crying reverse racism, questioning why their children have to be exposed to other cultural holidays but cannot celebrate their own.  People stating that this only happens in "Curry, or I mean Surrey". 

Lesson plans, and cool online projects are awesome ways to keep students engaged in the classroom with using technology.  But at times I personally feel that educators forget a couple of things:

• Many of our students come from different backgrounds and different socio-economic lifestyles and so we must be cognizant of that when we are teaching and using these technological tools, because there is still a bit of a digital divide.
• When teaching digital citizenship (especially to highschool students) remember that racism is an important topic to discuss.  Students are using that type of language in their schools and are probably using them online as well.
• Remind students that even racist quotes from popular music and online pictures that perpetuate derogatory ideologies are viewed as part of their online social identity and they can be held responsible for their online actions.