Educational technologies in different organizations: LMS evaluation

Chose an organization which you are familiar with, and evaluate educational technology using Bates’ models ADDIE and Agile Design outlined in Chapter 4: Bates (2014).

1. How informative are these two models for determining whether your organization implements educational technologies in the most effective way?

2. Which of these two models better fit your own preferences in  instructional design?

Consider the evaluation method for educational technologies introduced by Nel, Dreyer and Carstens (2010), and their division between primary and secondary criteria for analysis.

3. Use these criteria to evaluate how well your organization is prepared for implementing educational technologies.

4. What other factors contribute to successful implementation of learning technologies in educational organizations?

Response

Organisation: My school, Suzhou Singapore International School (SSIS)

Both ADDIE and Agile design models are effective criteria for SSIS, considering the size of the organisation. ADDIE is necessary for school-wide platforms, such as our Moodle ran LMS, DragonNet, that connects our staff, student and community learning through our intranet (necessary evil, particularly with China’s Great Firewall).

However, breaking the school down further in its learning technologies, I feel that the grade-to-grade breakdown is more an Agile approach. It is one which better responds to the needs of our learning, which is always changing since transdisciplinary units of inquiry are planned from a conceptual lens that places emphasis on authentic learning within the IB’s Primary Years Programme (PYP).

My own preferential design: Agile

Tania Lattanzio, of Innovative Global Education, who is an expert and global speaker on assessment, says it best: “Any PYP teacher that is planned too far ahead, is not teaching inquiry and is not responsive to the needs of their learners.”

ADDIE is far too regimented and planned ahead to fit within the PYP framework. An Agile approach, with a healthy mix of Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe) and ongoing reflection, is far better suited for the flexibility needed during the phases of inquiry (Kath Murdoch).

Primary & Secondary Criteria Analysis of SSIS

Primary Criteria

• Learning outcomes: Our elementary edtech team is very open-minded, flexible and responsive to teacher and learner needs. If there is strong links found to the curriculum, then the drive towards making it happen becomes clear in order to sell it to our board of directors, if need be.
• Active learning: Given the very nature of an IB school, learning grounded in social constructivism and units of inquiry have a conceptual focus. We have no textbooks. Inquiry starts with “tuning in” and establishing what is known to them and building upon that prior knowledge. Harnessing their wonder and big questions is a big element to this.
• Collaborative learning: Again, social constructivist practice is evident in teacher planning and delivery, but also in student activities. Our current unit of inquiry has a strong conceptual focus on perception. The central idea is, “How media allow us to express ourselves and share ideas.” We are concentrating on how, yes, our own perspective is important, but also how individuals can shape the collective and vice-versa. Some of the richest learning moments for the students has been through the perceptions of their peers, teachers and parents and how it reshapes their own perspectives on what they are learning within each media they have been using to express themselves (e.g. coding, patterning, photography, drama, calligraphy and cooking). Tech plays a pivotal role in all these experiences in the way that we share our ideas with a greater audience (e.g. Scratch: Coding; Cameras: Photography; iMovie: Drama performances; and the server: hosting saved files).
• Multi-faceted interaction: Technologies within the school allow for individual and shared experiences. Furthermore, they allow for greater global connections through digital portfolios and class blogs. Students can share their creations and peers, parents and others can comment and offer feedback to turn these interactions into formative feedback opportunities to drive learning forward.
• Multi-faceted interaction of learner differences: Again, boxes being ticked here. A few examples: Translation apps for ESL students on iPads, voice-to-text services on Macbooks for students with disabilities such as dyslexia and the ability to film students whose auditory reflections supersede their written ones.
• Multi-faceted feedback: WordPress blogs (locally hosted) and shared student Evernote portfolios are our two main ways that we share our learning to the greater world that is a two-way street for formative feedback that has the potential for global reach. Unfortunately, many great platforms have Google scripts attached to them, which means that they would need a VPN to access them behind China’s Great Firewall. To further exacerbate the issue, our school was built upon being the “government approved” international school in our district (i.e. we can’t have an open VPN line for learning). Moral here: Censorship sucks.

Secondary Criteria

• Access: Our biggest drawback. The Great Firewall (GFW) is extremely limiting in terms of what you can do. You’d be surprised how much content has a Google script attached to it (i.e. Doesn’t work in China). I’ve lost count of the amount of times that I’ve gotten excited about something new to implement in my classroom or share with our edtech committee, yet am shot down as soon as I field test it. Either that, or it works today and is censored tomorrow. Yes, there are similar Chinese equivalents to much of the tech that we, as international educators, are familiar with on a global scale, yet the language barrier of them being all in Mandarin, again, poses a threat to access to all stakeholders within our international school community.
• Costs: Each division is given a budget, specifically edtech. Generally, if it ticks a bunch of boxes in terms of curriculum alignment and school vision, usually the board green-lights the project. Large benefits of working in a private international school with high tuition fees. Sometimes educating parents on the importance and need for technology that the board initially shuts down for funding also helps persuade projects to approval.
• Operability: Not that I condone being an “Apple” school (for reasons of corporate branding of young minds), I get it. It synergizes operability and platforms (albeit limiting to an extent) so that scaffolding of function is transferrable for learners of any age. For example, knowing how operate features within Pages, can transfer over to Keynote. But couldn’t this be argued across most platforms nowadays? I’d much prefer our school to be a B.Y.O.D. environment, or even any other corporate brand that doesn’t have its workers committing suicide, locally, as a result of their working conditions bestowed upon them.

What other factors contribute to successful implementation of learning technologies in educational organizations?

• Leadership: Whether or not they condone the importance of digital technologies and are advocates and model it themselves. This is crucial for approval and sustained direction of professional development in this area. Gatekeepers can be roadblocks.
• Board of directors: Funding, funding, funding! Can be your greatest ally or biggest roadblock. Their beliefs can determine the state of digital affairs.
• Bureaucratic red tape: Have I mentioned the GFW?
• Geographical infrastructure: Does the area you reside in have access to high-speed internet?
• School culture: Is it one that celebrates risk-taking, inquiry, growth mindsets and lifelong learning? Does it have accountable action for those teachers who are resilient to change?

Digital-age teaching professionals

Consider the standards presented in the report issued by The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE): Redefining learning in a technology-driven world. June 2016.These are devised to prepare students for work and life in technology-dependent future, that is “empowering students to have a voice and choice in their learning”. Using the criteria developed in the ISTE (2016) document and in the Chickering & Ehrmann (1996) article, consider to what extent these reflect the competencies and skills you practice in your teaching and in your learning.

1. Which criteria for the technological competencies seem the most informative to you and applicable to your experiences?
2. What technological competencies are in demand and rewarded in your organization?
3. What do you see as the biggest challenge for the teachers and the students to professionally succeed in a “digital-age”, in technology-dependent environments?

Response:

Which criteria are the most informative & important for me?

Starting with Chickering & Ehrmann’s (1996)

• Good practice encourages connections amongst stakeholders: One of tech’s greatest affordances, from a conceptual lens, is connection. It can not only save us time, but break down social and cultural barriers that may not happen in traditional F2F learning. Collaboration can happen in asynchronous or synchronous fashion, regardless of location (yet arguable with censorship – see China). For me, this means greater perspective from cohorts and time savings when considering the lack in commuting before learning.
• Good practice develops reciprocity and cooperation among students: Big fan of constructivism. Individual accountability is important, but that doesn’t mean that social collaboration can’t be entertained. Children learn better from their peers. Collaboration promotes endless opportunities for anecdotal formative assessment and it develops skills of arbitration, making concessions and working towards a collective goal. Important and authentic life skills.
• Good practice uses active learning techniques: Learning experiences should always strive to be authentic and contextual. Burn textbooks; they’re the anti-thesis of this. I’m very passionate about the IB’s PYP curriculum and would find it hard to teach in any other model that didn’t focus heavily on conceptual-based inquiry. Sure it requires more work, but engagement and motivation is rarely an issue. I learn so much from every inquiry, too.
• Good practice gives prompt feedback: Timely, formative feedback is crucial. Tech affords us with 24:7 connections to learning and allows for peers to comment on work to drive learning forward. Yes, these are taught skills, but once developed and implemented, they’re magical. Reflection is such an important part in learning, that is often ignored. Learn. Practice. Reflect. Repeat (with some added dashes of healthy failure and frustration, too).

ISTE (2016):

• Computational thinking: Huge fan of Seymour Papert. In sum, students should be the boss of their technology and not vice-versa. Constructing and creating ideas is more fun and engaging than following someone else’s agenda. It promotes logical, “out of the box”, problem solving skills. Big fan of “tinkering” and understanding how things work. Break it down, rebuild it. understand it. Recreate or remix it.
• Social and emotional skills: I’ve been using the hashtag #grit for three years running now in China and was elated to see the ISTE put it on paper. Can’t tell you how resilient censorship and the Great Firewall (GFW) has made me. It has sparked a very successful business venture for me in learning how to code around the GFW and get people connected the right way. I’m equally a huge fan of Dweck’s work on growth mindsets. If you’re an elementary educator, I highly recommend Class Dojo’s recent five part mini-series, included with plenty of rich teacher questions and activities to go along with it.
• Digital citizenship: Or even digital literacy. How many curricula are teaching kids to link jump? After all, tech is supposed to promote efficiency, no? Furthermore, not only teaching our kids, but also parents, too. Think. Pause. Reflect. Comment. Or what about just being kind and positive? Important skills to promote in a “keyboard warrior” or “troll” world. I love sharing Google’s Online Safety Roadshow five part mini-series, along with this video from Common Sense Media with my children:

• Design processes and the maker movement: This combines with all of my aforementioned arguments discussed in the “Computational thinking” section.
• Global citizens: Can’t figure out how something works? Why is it broken? Tinker first. If you’re still stuck, go to YouTube or even contact the developer, personally, on Twitter! Technology also gives users a greater audience. Digital portfolio programs, like Seesaw, allow for an international student, in China, for example, to receive synchronous feedback from their parent on a business trip in Germany. Finally, collaboration is no longer bound to location. MET course project work is a fine example of this, with the help of applications like Google’s Apps for Education and, even Blackboard.

What technological competencies are in demand and rewarded in your organization?

Arguably all?! In the highly competitive and rewarding career of international teaching, these are concepts that any passionate edtech, specialist or generalist teacher should aspire to master or improve upon. Come occupational transition time, I’ll be looking for organizations/schools that are actively promoting these ideals.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for the teachers and the students to professionally succeed in a “digital-age”, in technology-dependent environments?

I’m going to ruffle a few feathers here, but unions and tenure systems that support teachers resilient to change. As educators, our modelling promotes learning. Adults who struggle with grit, perseverance and computational thinking themselves, will not benefit anyone. Technology is frustrating, even for self-proclaimed tech geeks such as myself. Even if you aren’t that comfortable with technology, put your swimmers on and dip your feet in the pool. Have a growth mindset. Remember, that you are just not great at it … yet. It takes time, practice, reflection and goal setting. Metacognition is an important notion here. Key point: Step out of your comfort zone!