Let us know about your vision?

Welcome to the future! I am not sure that I am confident that I could predict the trends in technology that will shape the world and education in 10 years as Alexander did. Nor would I have the confidence to predict even 2 or 4 or 6 years into the future.

At the same time, whatever utopian vision of technology may or may not exist in the future, I think that a more important point if there was an ‘ideal’ would be that there are varying degrees of meeting this ideal standard or not. Let me explain what I mean by this. In the year 2016, in the K-12 education systems, there are huge discrepancies among what and how education is offered. Globally we have a range of accessibility and hardware such as large international schools abroad that offer 1-to-1 computer use for their students to underfunded public school systems which lag behind running old operating systems on bulky old computers. Worse yet are places in the world where they still struggle to use basic paper and pencil technology to run their classroom due to lack of resources, this spectrum of having and have-nots will still be part of the education world as I see it in the future.

What was it that “wowed” you?

Alexander (2014) comments that all post-secondary classes would be flipped by 2024 in the Two Cultures scenario. I would love to see the end to large traditional lecture style classes in post-secondary institutions. This style of ‘chalk and talk’ teaching is antiquated and doesn’t relate to current educational research. It also means that there is a significant divide between the style of teaching in most K-12 classrooms and the style of teaching in some post-secondary institutions.

What are your concerns?

As described in my vision, my concern lies in who has access to technology. It doesn’t matter what the best/ ideal technology is and how it is used if that is only accessible to a small portion of students globally.

How do you see yourself in shaping the landscape?

I hope that my future teaching practise is focussed on providing the best possible learning environment for my students. I am a huge proponent of technology in education with the caveat that the technology is bettering learning, not an add-on, not a distraction but a truly better way for students to learn and to express their knowledge. I hope that I will be a critical consumer and user of technology and that I can also instill these values in my students.

Alexander, B. (2014). Higher education in 2014: Glimpsing the future. Educause Review, 4(5) Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/higher-education-2024-glimpsing-future?utm_source=Informz&utm_medium=Email+marketing&utm_campaign=EDUCAUSE

Bates, T. (2014). MOOCs. In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved fromhttp://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/chapter-7-moocs/ (Chapter 5)

New Media Consortium. (2015). NMC Horizon Report 2015: Higher ed edition. Retrieved from http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-HE-EN.pdf

I have proudly and fastidiously been monitoring my digital footprint since 2012. I had heard of digital footprints before this, but an important moment was at a session that I attended at the 21st Century Learning Conference. The session leader had ‘googled’ all participants solely based on the email address that they had provided to the conference. She began the session by playing a video of snippets of what she found out about us. It was eye-opening! (Though I was lucky, even at that point, to have a secure and professional online appearance.)

Since then, I am aware of privacy setting within apps and web 2.0 tools I use, and I Google myself once a month.
I know that many people prefer to have dual accounts as teachers. One for their personal life and one for their professional life but I am not in the habit of doubling up on all accounts (too many passwords to remember!), so I use one account only and consciously post knowing the various audiences that may view my posts.
Since I am currently teaching Grade 2, there is not too much talk of digital footprint yet. Students usually have adult (teacher and parent) created accounts to educational websites rather than self-subscribed. The focus is more on cybersafety and cyberbullying.
When I was teaching middle school, previously, for the past four years, digital footprints were relevant. I like the UBC Digital Tattoo resources and the metaphor of online activity as permanent as a tattoo. In the future, if I am teaching older students again, I hope to use the UBC resources.

UBC Digital tattoo. Retrieved from http://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/?login

I teach Grade 2 at an IB Primary Years Programme International School. The IB asks teachers and the school to promote and teach international mindedness. I think that international mindedness is a nice compliment to the power of social media.

Due to time and cost restrictions, students are not able to physically engage with the global community. Except occasionally through international trips, exchanges and the like, though these are only available to a certain section of the schooling population, students most often interact with their school and local community. Further, age is an important factor in being able to experience places beyond the local community. Young primary age students only use local areas to take day field trips.

Before the internet, teachers could bring the ‘world’ into the classroom via current events on TV or in a newspaper, guest speakers could visit the school and students could ‘see’ the world in literature and movies.

The internet, first, provided a one-way ‘on demand’ access to pictures, multimedia and information for students to explore. Social media has revolutionized the internet to provide two-way communication between the classroom and the global community. Learning outcomes could be developed via social media to have students contact, engage with and establish relationships globally.

There are many ways that teachers are already reaching out to the global community. As November (2012) emphasizes Twitter is a great way for teachers and their students to connect with people in real time especially when important events happen. Another example is Pernille Ripp’s Global Read Aloud, an opportunity for students to create a type of global literature circle.

I think that Bates (2014) second question depends on how much technology a teacher is comfortable with. Initially, I think having a teacher participate in something like the Global Read Aloud is far less intimidating then asking them to redesign their course/ class around social media. However, I think that many teachers would be up to the task on this. I know that I certainly would!

Bates, T. (2014). Pedagogical differences between media: Social media. In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/9-5-5-social-media/ (Chapter 7, point 6)

November, A. (2012).  How Twitter can be used as a powerful educational tool. November Learning [Weblog] Retrieved from http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/how-twitter-can-be-used-as-a-powerful-educational-

Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

What is the position of your workplace regarding the use of mobile devices in the classroom/for learning? Who is allowed to use mobile devices: teachers, students? What for?

My workplace is an elementary school (Grades K-5). The school encourages the use of iPads but there is no provision for smartphones and tablets for students. Additionally, the grade 3-5 students are in a 1-to-1 Mac program, while the K-2 students have access to a laptop cart and a computer room with PC computers.

Teachers are asked not to use their smartphones in the classroom. Video and photos of learning should be taken with the class cameras or an iPad. However, many teachers chose to disregard this rule since their phones are already synced to upload files automatically to the school Google Drive.

Students use the iPads for a variety of learning experiences: from educational apps (across all subjects) to creating movies with iMovie or animations with the app iMotion and a variety of other purposes. My students are currently in love with the game Pet Bingo for practicing operations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

What are the obstacles?

The obstacles that we face are minor. The school has a limited supply of iPads, and they must be booked in advance. There are no iPads that belong to an individual classroom.

The second obstacles are the memory size of the iPads. Since the devices have a large number of apps on them, there is little storage space for videos. When students create movies using iMovie the Photo Album usually needs to be erased first to have enough space to record the videos needed to make an iMovie. Additionally, at the end of each month, all iPads have all photos deleted.

Are there any success stories?

Success stories are numerous. In my Grade 2 classroom, our third Unit of Inquiry was about technology. The summative assessment was for the students to make an instructional video using iMovie to explain how to use one of the apps that we had learned during the Unit. It is quite interesting to watch the planning, recording and editing ability of students who are only 7-8 years old. The assessments were well done overall. We watched the series of instructional videos in a film festival atmosphere to celebrate our learning and as a way to peer assess each others work.

How does the use of mobile devices change the way we teach and learn?

Mobile devices offer so much to teaching and learning. From choice to self-paced study/ review, a mobile device can assist in giving differentiation in tasks and assessments thus our school is able to address some of the factors of motivation that the Ciampa paper discusses. Students are now creators rather than workbook or worksheet completers. This is just the tip of the mobile device iceberg.

References

Ciampa, K. (2013, 08). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82-96. doi:10.1111/jcal.12036