Week 1 Discussion: Auto e-ography
Context:
This was a threaded conversation in response to my original post. I had shared a quote from one of my associate teachers and hinted that sometimes technology doesn’t have a place in all our lessons; we need to consider the benefits of the educational value and the costs from implementation. This created a larger conversation around frameworks for selecting technology like SAMR and SECTIONS. In this reply to Ram, we were discussing the SAMR model and using technology for multiple representations of learning.
Post:
Hi ____,
I think I would classify that more at an Augmentation level because now the inclusion of technology has a pedagogical purpose.
For greater context, my associate teacher’s example for where technology was a substitution he didn’t want to use was connected to algebra tiles. He didn’t think using algebra tiles was useful because his usual methods would be just as or more effective and algebra tiles would introduce more challenges (because of the zero pair) for his specific demographics of students. As well, using algebra tiles doesn’t link students to developing digital skills.
For the movie making and alternate forms of assessment that use technology, I’ve always been hesitant with this because of the potential for grade pollution and the challenges of trying to get students to learn the digital skills. To be fair, I’m not a practicing classroom teacher anymore and when I was, I didn’t have the opportunities to implement some of the ideas I had, so I don’t know if these ideas will be practical. However, these are my concerns and suggestions:
- Grade pollution: Are we marking the product or the content? I can see challenges with unearthing student learning if it’s masked by a different medium and especially if it’s one that they are unfamiliar with. Regardless, this is always a challenge with any form of assessment.
- Learning digital skills: Super important for sure, but challenging depending on the teacher’s own skills set. What happens if the teacher isn’t familiar with movie pre-production, production, and post-production? Is the teacher interested in these phases, or does the interest lie solely in using software? I don’t know how feasible this might be in your school, but connecting to a media arts or communications technology teacher would be really useful here. It would be really cool to team teach this. If not, I think the usual path I’ve seen teachers take is to tell the students to figure it out on their own.
- Addressing students’ feeling of learning: I didn’t realize how important this would be until I further reflected upon Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory.. Essentially, if students don’t realize they are learning or feeling that they are unable to take control of their learning, they will not self-regulate and miss out on the learning opportunities. From the teacher perspective, I would like to implement tiered assessments:
- Encourage students to try demonstrating their learning through different media through expectations and assignment weight values: Throughout the term, students will have X number of assignments. Some assignments will have higher weights, while others will have lower weights. For a higher weighted assessment, students have free choice over the medium (e.g,, essay, presentation, movie). For a lower weighted assessment in this group, students are NOT allowed to choose a medium they have previously used (especially one that they are more comfortable with; this is negotiable with the students). Hopefully the lower weighting takes the pressure off and encourages exploration.
From writing this, I can see that I have a very teacher-oriented approach. This is a result of my current personal learning theory and experiences with students. Having students take free reign over learning new media is definitely great, but it would depend on your specific group. I believe that structure and experts are important and it would be helpful for students.
Outside of this specific assessment medium conversation, digital skills and technology resources are so important! I think the selection of these tools and resources will stem from a deep understanding of the discipline and its pathways.
Reflection:
I think this was my meritorious post because of the conversation it was connected to. This post was very important in helping unearthing a variety of underlying assumptions about teaching, learning, and technology:
- Personal learning theories
- Frameworks for selecting, designing, and applying technology
- Concerns about assessment, grade pollution
Personal learning theories: As I reflect upon this post, I see more and more of my teacher-oriented approach to teaching and learning. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s important to identify this underlying assumption. It’s clear from my future discussions and posts that I often think of technology as what a teacher uses, what a teacher does, and how students are impacted. In these cases the teacher is an active agent, but the students are acted upon.
In unearthing these underlying assumptions, I know that this comes from my experiences as a supply teacher and university teaching assistant. The lack of control and time have caused me to prioritize and efficiently use direct instruction. This has led me to a more behaviourist and cognitivist bias in my teaching. My preference is to transition from behaviourist to cognitivist to constructivist approaches. This scaffold fits well with Bloom’s taxonomy as long as it involves modelling, shaping, and fading.
It’s important for me to be aware of my personal learning theory because it influences how I select, design, and apply technology.
Frameworks: Choosing technology within a framework is important as it grounds us in pedagogy. I am still trying to wrap my head around my ETEC 524 instructor’s comment on dismissing the Substitution from the SAMR model, but it’s challenging. I do prefer the detail of the SECTIONS model, but will use the SAMR model as a quick test.
Assessments: My current bias is to engage students through assessment. Since marks and feedback are valued and are used to shape behaviour, I am often thinking about how the structure of assessments are used to encourage learning. Assessment and evaluation is a tricky topic because it’s hard to tell what a student knows. Of course, we can get a window into this through multiple, frequent, varied, valid, and transparent assessments, but this is easier said than done.
Regardless, it’s important to engage students in assessments that help them develop digital skills and technical skills as aligned with the discipline.