After refocusing myself with my blogging process and jumping back to the beginning with my students I have been looking quite closely at my integration of technology within my classroom. I have just read a posting by Jackie Gerstein discussing how many schools Teach Web 1.0, claim 2.0, but should be aiming for Web 3.0. She uses the term Heutagogy and lifelong learning . Then in a chat with a colleague on twitter it was raised that we say 21st Century Learning, yet we are into the 13th year of the 21st Century, so should we just now call it learning?
When visiting Point England School in the Manaiakalani Cluster in Auckland last year there was a presentation from the school ambassadors, a group of year 6 students who welcome the many visitors to the school and share the learning and vision of the school. Each child shared their education story and had a paint drawn picture on the projector behind them. Their pictures included images such as the iPhone and Steve Irwin. They then asked us why they had chosen those images, as they were there for a reason, the reason was that those things, the first iPhone, the death of Steve Irwin, happened in their first few weeks of education. The then articulated that prior to these things, quite big events in our lives, were just history like we view World War 1 – they were their past, and things happening before them were not a part of their life. They are here now and want to be taught in the now, not the past.
So how do we see the effectivness of our teaching and use of technology? Other than observing students, their creations and their progress, we can apply the SAMR model to our classroom. Are we enhancing with Substitutuon or Augmentation or are we Transforming the learning with Modification and Redefinition?
My Class as of Week 7 Term 1 2013
Enhancing
Substitution:
Publishing writing on Word: Some feel that this is not nessasary, but my kids love it, get to learn skills like typing, text modification, digital layout of a page and inserting images. (I could almost argue that it was Augmentation)
Monline Basic Facts Games – Great for taking into deeper levels of knowledge and for kids to learn without really knowing that they are learning, but could almost be as effective with board games.
Augmentation:
Learning Based Games Such as Mathletics and STEPs to Literacy: Direat data is availible to me as the teacher and able to design the learining to the individual students. They are also able to use at home.
Blogging: Like buddy classes that you would send letters to and recieve back 3 months later if you were lucky, of often that never returned.
Email and Text Messaging: Notes would usually get home, phonecalls would usually get the parent, but an email is quick and easy, as is the text message, and communication is instantaneous and a connection is made.
Audioboo and Soundcloud: Takes the 20th Century tape deck and records instantaneously to be ombeded in blogs.
Transforming
Modification
Blogging: The walls of the classroom are torn down and parents now get to see what is happening. They have the cues to discuss with their children as they hae seen the images of the firld trip before the clild had gotten home from school.
Skype: You are now inside another classroom and connecting with them. responding directly to their questions and asking your own.
Digital Creation: At the moment this is Modification, but I hope that by the middle of the year it will have moved onto the redefinition stage. iMovies created by 7 year olds to share with Quad Blogging classes on the other side of the world what our school looks like and why it is special.
Digital Photos and Digital Photo manipulation.
Redefinition:
…now this is where I am lacking and where I wish to head towards. Movies at the moment are teacher directed, as we are still learning some of the skills, but when they become a tool for sharing their learning, when the music on the clis was created bythem or sources by them from Creative Commons sites, oh the creation will be very different. I feel that once they take ownership of the learning and take the skills that they have developed and make their own meaning then I will have reached the Redefinition stage and this is where I aim towards.
OK, so I’m here. I’m a teacher living and teaching in the 21st Century, not a 21st Century Educator, heck I graduated in 2002 and began Teachers College in 2000, so have not ever trained or taught in the 20th Century. I feel that I am Enhancing with my use of technology and branching into Transforming and though assessing my practice I have a clearer Idea of where I am and where I want to go.
I finish with a quote I read today “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking”.
in the UK in 2016 – it is said that many were given and never turned on as there were rafts of teachers and students who did not have the time, curiosity or ability to get them working.
Dukelyer 