This week's focus for #COETAIL13 Course One - Week 4 is centered upon effective strategies for educational technology implementation and integration.
ISTE Educator Learner Standard Indicator 2b - Shape and empower a shared vision of learning with ed-tech with your stakeholders. From the readings, the two most influential and enjoyable, which I'll unpack below, were:
Edutopia Article This article won me over in their intro about looking out for "devils in sheep's clothing" during the pandemic. In other words, stick with less gimmicky items and focus more on good pedagogy - your gut should take care of the rest. If there are too many sparkles, it may not be the best for your learners. These five tips shared offer a great starting point:
TeachThought Article
These questions are gold.
I can't even narrow down this list to any questions that I don't like. It's that good that I'll be using this for future coaching, workshops and more. One question that transitions nicely into my next sub-heading is, "Have I started with purpose and pedagogy instead of the tech?" Start with TPaCK Being passionate about Edtech for years, I'm often sought out by colleagues with inquiries about technology integration-specific questions and help amongst my colleagues. My starting questions are usually about the enduring understanding of the unit they are teaching. In other words, I want to know the GRASPS statement, the summative task, or "What knowledge and understandings do you want your learners to walk away with?". This is the way... the UbD way. More importantly, it is the TPaCK way. If you're unfamiliar with TPaCK, I highly recommend watching this short video.
Essentially, you start with your curricular or "content knowledge" (i.e. the standards drive the learning in your context). Next, you know your craft, or, put simply, are the expert in the "pedagogical knowledge" as to your delivery of the content. Lastly, the "technical knowledge" is understanding what "tech" will best make the understanding and knowledge of the content visible.
Other super important consideration - knowing your learners and the context in which you teach (represented by the dashed line below). The sweet spot is where all three circles overlap ?. So let's stop for a second. Close your eyes and ask yourself - "What is 'technology'?" or, better yet "What do I see when I see 'technology'?" What did you come up with? Did you include some of the things in this photo?
Remember that technology is all around us. Papers, pencils, computers, and chairs combined. Digital technology is just one aspect when it comes to putting a label on this term.
In sum, curriculum first, use your pedagogical expertise to scaffold the learning, then select the best tech to get you there. Add in some and/or all of TeachThought's 15 questions and this should steer you to an excellent end result! SAMR I can't write a post on this topic and not include SAMR. However, I do put it at the bottom of this post for the following reasons:
Lefflerd, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Agency Some final questions I'd like you to ruminate upon when considering which educational technology to use in your classroom are the following:
The by-product of saying "YES!" to these questions is creating "ownership" in learning. In other words, building self-efficacious and empowered learners! The IB offers a great reflection wrap sheet in regards to honouring agency below:
Hopefully, I have empowered you to think more deeply about the ways you integrate educational technology in your teaching context.
I leave you with one of my favourite quotes on the subject, by educator and author, George Couros.
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