Category Archives: Notable Discussions

Final Synthesis

As we are reaching the end of the course, I realize that it is modelled after a Learning for Use framework (Edelson, 2001).

Motivation: In Module A, we framed the issues around educational technology use in STEM. Through activities and discussion that targeted our underlying assumptions around technology, pedagogy, and STEM, our schema were activated and primed.
Knowledge Construction: In Module B, we examined foundational designs of TELEs. Our preconceptions were tested and we experimented with each of the designs. It was challenging to initially distinguish between these instructional frameworks, but it was possible through interaction and discussion.
Knowledge Refinement: In Module C, we explored emerging genres for teaching, learning, and digital technologies. Using these more current strategies, we re-visited how we could supplement TELEs to create more varied and rich learning experiences.

In this final synthesis post, I will analyze my learning in each module and how it has led me to my current ideas about teaching and learning STEM with technology.

Module A: Framing Issues

Reflecting upon what we have learned, my initial ideas about teaching and learning with technology can be enhanced.

A framework is needed for selecting, designing, and applying technology

After taking ETEC524, I started to used the SAMR and SECTIONS frameworks in this order:

SAMR (Puentedura, 2017): If using a tool would only fall into the Substitution level, it should not be used. I took a rather reductionist approach towards using technology. I did not value tools that would be expensive to implement for a low return on learning. However, feedback from my ETEC524 instructor, Professor Boksic, made me question this strategy. She suggested that substitution shouldn’t be dismissed. I’ve spent two semesters thinking about this idea.
SECTIONS (Bates, 2016): I love the SECTIONS framework because it considers many important variables. Ease of use and how the learning activity needs to be modified around the tool while maintaining a student centred experience is often overlooked.

The design of the experience needs to be based on learning theories

My personal learning theory colours my teaching and learning. I view learning as a journey through a landscape. The learner’s experiences are constructions of ideas that change as they interact with the landscape and others.

My previous teaching experiences forced me to prioritize limited time to explain concepts. Due to this, I developed a behaviourist and cognitivist bias. Although I appreciate constructivism, I do not think that everything needs to be socially constructed. I prefer scaffolding cycles of equilibrium and disequilibrium as per Piagetian theory (Yilmaz, 2011). Since students can develop misconceptions through assimilation, assessments and activities should specifically target these potential ideas and force students to confront them (Confrey, 1990). As students develop competence and confidence, the learning structure will fade from co-regulation to self-regulation.

With these perspectives, I find it valuable to explicitly structure learning based on preconceptions, scaffolding, and varied assessment.

Analysis of Assumptions

My original frameworks are missing explicit intersections with STEM. In re-reading my posts from Module A, I noticed many underlying assumptions about teaching and learning with technology that arise from my experiences of being a Chemistry student.

Teaching and learning was perceived as what the teacher did

Discussions focussed on what the teacher would do and how the teacher would structure the activity. If we weren’t talking about the teacher, we would be talking about how students interacted with content. We rarely discussed how students would interact with each other, the teacher, or others in a larger community. The peer and mentor interactions are important to STEM discourse and constructivism. By neglecting these topics initially, I realize that I had perceived high school math and science as independent learning tasks. Although this reflects how I learned as a student, it should not reflect how our students should be learning.

A hesitance towards technology

Many discussions were about student resistance and the lack of teacher training. Our class experienced barriers like limited time, access to technology, and challenges with implementation. Focussing on collaborative work and authentic assessment seemed like better options than to implement technology.

At the start of the semester, I had just observed the first half of the engineering design course I support. Many students hated our technology enhanced active learning exercises or felt that they did not know enough to participate. Although these feelings of learning may have been due to students overestimating their capabilities or experiencing a high cognitive load, it was difficult to convince students that active learning was helpful (Deslauriers et al, 2019). With my behaviourist and cognitivist bias, I was more interested in implementing pre-lecture quizzes in our learning management system. Since students did not appear to complete their readings, using marked assessments would be more motivating and lead to more compliance.

Teaching and learning occurs in an architecture of support

My implicit assumptions of teacher-centred learning, resistance to technology, and structuring learning for compliance reveal my dehumanization of learning. My behaviourist bias has caused me to perceive students as passive beings. This cynicism is problematic because it does not afford students opportunities for autonomy or exploration outside of pre-set constraints. The behaviourist mindset of punishment and reward also does not offer as many formative opportunities for students to learn from their mistakes.

Thankfully, the case study and interview with a colleague were important activities in re-humanizing teaching and learning. My interview transcript revealed that I was hyper-aware of the negative experiences and often used prompts about the challenges of using technology. Luckily my colleague brought a much more positive perspective to using technology. She reminded me that students do enjoy learning, technology can be motivating, and technology’s affordances can encourage participation. I realized that my reductionist bias to teaching and learning limited my appreciation of motivation, social learning, and other human factors.

While working in the unpacking assumptions discussion, I drew what could be an ideal science classroom.

I was reminded that the architecture of a space strongly impacts learning and collaboration. In this ideal space, one of the best pieces of technology would be the movable chairs and tables. Teachers, students, and the concepts being discussed can modify the space and how the interactions occur. I really like this space because it reflects the community aspect of scientific discourse, encourages collaboration, and makes learning visible.

With this paradigm shift, I was working towards determining how a pedagogical structure informs our choice of tools and how the affordances can be leveraged. Specifically, I wanted to explore how constructivist approaches could facilitate participatory learning.

Module B: Foundational designs of STEM TELEs

In Module B, I experienced a lot of initial confusion as I tried to differentiate between the TELEs. With the exception of Anchored Instruction, all the TELEs looked the same. After the synthesis discussion, I understood that the strategy for learning and locus of construction for each TELE is what makes them different.

TELE	Strategy for Learning	Locus of construction
Anchored Instruction	Complex problem in an authentic narrative	Teacher presents problem, students collaborate to solve it
SKI	Scaffolding concepts	Teacher; may transition to co-regulation and self-regulation
LfU	Motivation for activity	Student; prompt may be supplied by the teacher, students are motivated to fill in knowledge gaps
T-GEM	Observation and analysis	Student, teacher provides data, teacher may facilitate

The importance of distinct instructional frameworks

Through creating different activities using the TELEs and discussing my confusion with my classmates, I realized that the TELEs can supplement each other:

Anchored instruction contextualizes learning in an authentic situation. Students collaboratively solve complex problems by applying their prior knowledge (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1992). This is important in showing students that STEM lives outside of a textbook and involves interdisciplinary connections.
SKI is the most cognitivist of the TELEs we examined. It chunks concepts and encourages students to reflect, review, and reflect in order to make their learning visible (Linn et al, 2003). A SKI module can be a standalone activity for knowledge construction and can supplement a larger inquiry framework.
LfU supports teaching content and inquiry at the same time (Edelson, 2001). Its Piagetian parallels contextualize how activities will support learning.
T-GEM introduces novices to the inquiry cycle by generating a theory based on their prior knowledge, testing it, and modifying it (Khan, 2007). Classroom inquiry is challenging because there is an acceptable answer. The T-GEM framework can support the competing desires of getting students to engage in divergent thinking to generate their theory and then have them converge through evaluation and modification. Specifically targeting common misconceptions with test cases and outliers facilitates convergence to the accepted theories.

Large LfU cycles supported by SKI and T-GEM in the knowledge construction and refinement phases. The motivation could be supported by anchored instruction. These instructional frameworks are important in engaging in TPACK where teachers consider how the content can be represented, the pedagogical techniques that should be used, and how technology can support students and the concepts and activities (Mishra & Koehler, 2006).

The importance of grounding a TELE in learning theory

When creating a SKI module, I chose to use Articulate Rise because I found the WISE interface overwhelming. Rise is a fast authoring tool if you choose to play within its pre-defined blocks. In contrast, the WISE tool is more flexible and allows the user to design. Since I was so focused on the software, I had neglected the pedagogy of the lesson. Rise does not have a native open response option. Due to this, I have never considered creating a reflective journal task. I realized that the default affordances of a tool can trap the user into designing within these constraints.

This experience highlights the importance of TPACK. Teachers need to consider the intersections between technology, pedagogy, and the content in order to create a holistic learning experience (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). When I was trapped within Rise’s default affordances, I forgot the pedagogy and intentional design of a learning experience. Instead of thinking how a lesson can be molded to fit the technology, we should consider how a tool can be re-worked to for the learning experience. Now when I create Rise modules, I know that there is an inherent behaviourist bias due to the software. However, this will no longer limit my assessments to just recall and recognition questions. Instead, I can prompt users to pause, take notes, and re-visit their previous work.

Overall, Module B helped me appreciate the affordances of constructivist frameworks. The learning experience is more participatory and meaningful when students exercise more agency. The TELEs are instructional frameworks that are aligned STEM learning and support technology use.

Module C: Emerging genres of teaching, learning, and digital technologies

In Module C, we refined our understanding of instructional frameworks and TPACK by examining emerging genres.

Embodied Learning: Challenge the activities you create

I was surprised by Winn’s (2003) comments on how technology helps us expand our perception, but users are still physiologically constrained. Only after reading about the examples of how instructional misconceptions arose from time distortion and students taking visuals literally, did the concept of embodiment become more clear. Niebert et al (2012) emphasize that metaphors and analogies are effective when they are embodied. Metaphors and analogies fail when the source is constructed only by the teacher; students are not connecting to their knowledge landscapes and try to make sense of the metaphor based on their experiences. Metaphors can also fail when their use does not expand to all cases for the target domain.

In discussing how to divide by fractions, we were confused with how to use the sharing analogy. Sharing is a good analogy because it is embodied when you are working with whole numbers. Students can draw pictures or use manipulatives to show the actual sharing. However, this does not extend to cases where we try to divide by fractions. It is impossible to share a number of objects with a fraction of an individual. Instead, using the “how many groups of X are in Y” analogy is more effective. Although it is not as embodied as sharing, it extends well into more cases.

Knowledge Diffusion: Learning extends outside of the formal classroom

This lesson highlighted the nature of science and the conventions of the scientific community. Science education needs to reflect the personal construction of meaning based on independent interactions and observations and the social construction that is based on scientific discourse (Driver et al, 1994). Students need to appreciate both the empirical basis and the social construction and validation of science by engaging in activities that reflect this. Driver et al (1994) highlighted the importance of experts being able to switch between theories based on the context and what works. This idea aligns well with Piaget’s comments on accommodation where learners may accrete, tune, and accommodate (Yilmaz, 2011).

Given the need to participate in scientific discourse, informal learning helps students examine extra-curricular connections and develop their personal interests. The resources from Exploratorium looked like take home projects for students to get them excited about science in everyday life. The virtual field trips are also helpful in getting students an inside perspective of jobs and contexts they may not normally have access to. Although the virtual field trips seemed more like videos, it is important for students to engage in asynchronous or synchronous dialogue with these experts. STEM learning should not be confined to the formal classroom.

Information Visualization: Productive constraints can promote learning

As we are reaching the end of the course, I recognize that fully online learning and tools have a negative public perception. Face-to-face and real experiences are often more valued and consequently seen as inherently better. However, well-designed simulations can provide productive constraints that lead to larger learning gains (Finkelstein et al, 2005).

In creating my acid and base LfU lesson with a PhET simulation, I was initially hesitant in my PhET selection. When thinking about the potential instructional misconceptions that could arise, I thought that the PhET was not useful. It did not show dynamic equilibrium or solvent interactions. Again, I realized that I was focussed on a technology and content intersection and was forgetting about the pedagogy. The PhET simplifies the reality of dynamic equilibrium so that students interact within productive constraints; having too much content would lead to cognitive overload and students would end up watching rather than exploring (PhET Simulations, 2013). A standalone lesson does not need to be complete. Rather, it is an entry point for students to explore the content and it equips them with the skills to proceed to the next level. Like how LfU has a knowledge refinement phase and T-GEM has a modification phase, there needs to be activities for further learning. Learning is a cycle that continues so that students can continue to accommodate and refine their schema.

Next Steps

My teaching philosophy needs to better reflect how people learn in science. I can use the TPACK framework as the overarching lens:

Technology: Continue using the SAMR and SECTIONS modules for selecting, designing, and applying tools.
Pedagogy: Continue apply learning theories to create assessments. Instructional frameworks can support this.
Content: Personal construction and engagement in scientific discourse needs to be reflected in the classroom (Driver et al, 1994). To be scientifically literate, students need to engage in opportunities to develop the discipline’s symbolic system, observe phenomena, and participate in discourse through shared problems and tasks.

My experiences in teaching and learning have steered me away from the community aspects of learning science. When there is a time crunch, content is prioritized over collaboration and inquiry. Since I am no longer a classroom teacher, I cannot apply these new understandings in a chemistry context. My suggestions for what could occur in the classroom will stay as ideas. This was a challenge I always had when I participated in discussions: I don’t really know what it’s like in a real classroom. Never having access to a classroom has also caused me to focus more on content and technology.

To speak to my ideas at the beginning of this course, I’d like to address each of the misconceptions I had:

Students are resistant to active learning, maybe we should use it less: Students are novices, they may be overestimating their understanding and misinterpreting the increased cognitive load as not learning (Deslauriers et al, 2019). We need to address their feelings of learning because their frustrations may translate to limited self regulation for learning. The benefits and realities of active learning need to be shared with students (Deslauriers et al, 2019). We can also support students by creating structured pre-lecture tasks to build their confidence and engage in knowledge construction. Especially in first year university courses, these tasks can model the expectations for lecture preparation and orient students to active learning. Facilitated in-person activities should support knowledge refinement.
If using a technology results in substitution, it shouldn’t be used: Substitution shouldn’t be dismissed. A substitution may have overhead costs, but a reductionist perspective ignores the impact on the feeling of learning. The emotions and fun aspects can be motivating. As well, substitution may link towards multiple representations which can connect to diverse groups of students.
Before transitioning to constructivist methods, learning needs to be scaffolded: This is not necessarily true. In the TELEs we examined, the strategy for learning and locus of construction lead to different experiences. To motivate learning, students need to experience disequilibrium. To make their learning visible, their misconceptions need to be challenged and their prior knowledge needs to be tested.

I can apply my new understandings in instructional design for the engineering course I support and the medicine e-modules I work on. Although I do not have the content knowledge, participating in a community of inquiry with my team members will help fill the gaps. I look forward to making recommendations about learning objects and learning experiences. I will not have access to modifying physical spaces, but I can still shape a digital space so that it has an architecture of support and collaboration.

To support this digital architecture, I want to learn more about user experience and designing for accessible experiences. Next semester, I am taking Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing and Ableism, Equity, and Educational Technology. I think these courses will help me further explore these areas. By exploring the TELEs, examples of authentic assessments, and the larger scientific discourse, I think it’s important to explore multiple representations of content and multiple methods of communication. Our spaces are often dominated by text but multimedia is often more engaging. The challenge with multimedia is that it should also be presented with alt text or transcripts. However, this is an accessibility requirement and should be built into the design process. With these new questions and areas of interest, the Learning for Use cycle begins again.

References

Bates, T. (2016). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (1992). The Jasper series as an example of anchored instruction: Theory, program, description, and assessment data. Educational Psychologist, 27(3), 291-315.

Confrey, J. (1990). A review of the research on student conceptions in mathematics, science, and programming. Review of research in education, 16, 3-56.

Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(39), 19251-19257. doi:10.1073/pnas.1821936116

Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Scott, P., & Mortimer, E. (1994). Constructing scientific knowledge in the classroom. Educational researcher, 23(7), 5-12.

Edelson, D.C. (2001). Learning-for-use: A framework for the design of technology-supported inquiry activities. Journal of Research in Science Teaching,38(3), 355-385.

Finkelstein, N.D., Perkins, K.K., Adams, W., Kohl, P., & Podolefsky, N. (2005). When learning about the real world is better done virtually: A study of substituting computer simulations for laboratory equipment. Physics Education Research,1(1), 1-8.

Khan, S. (2007). Model-based inquiries in chemistry. Science Education, 91(6), 877-905.

Linn, M., Clark, D., & Slotta, J. (2003). Wise design for knowledge integration. Science Education, 87(4), 517-538.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. The Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.

Niebert, K., Marsch, S., & Treagust, D. F. (2012). Understanding needs embodiment: A theory‐guided reanalysis of the role of metaphors and analogies in understanding science. Science Education, 96(5), 849-877. doi: 10.1002/sce.21026

[PhET Simulations]. (2013, Jan 12). PhET: Research and Development [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/qdeHagIeyrc

(2017, Oct 28). Ruben Puentedura – Rethinking Educational Technology [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/7N67bt0FA8s

Winn, W. (2003). Learning in artificial environments: Embodiment, embeddedness, and dynamic adaptation. Technology, Instruction, Cognition and Learning, 1(1), 87-114.

Yilmaz, K. (2011). The cognitive perspective on learning: Its theoretical underpinnings and implications for classroom practices. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 84(5), 204-212. doi:10.1080/00098655.2011.568989

Remote Emergency Teaching

EDUCAUSE has a great article on the differences between emergency remote teaching and online learning. The COVID-19 situation has caused a mass online migration for academic continuity. However, as argued in the article, this situation is emergency remote teaching, rather than online learning.

In ETEC524, everyone created a blended or fully online unit of learning within a course. As part of this project, we explored how to do this by using frameworks to select, design, and apply learning technologies and to examine evidence based strategies for technology enhanced learning. Although we only created part of the courses, we still had a large amount of time to work towards the section that we did design. This is not the current situation that is occurring in schools and post-secondary institutions.

In contrast to online learning, emergency remote teaching is a strategy for academic continuity that takes a face-to-face or blended course and fast forwards it into a fully online remote format. This strategy doesn’t necessarily take into account pedagogy as it’s about survival and getting through the semester.

Some considerations that we had to take into account were to:

Manage expectations: communicating with students and other members of the teaching team to explain the changes.
Modify remaining assessments for a remote format: we needed to take into consideration possible equity challenges coming from access to software and hardware.
Select simple online tools: keeping in mind that students were also experiencing upheaval in all their courses and living situations, we were aware that it would be a lot to get students to learn a variety of new tools in a short amount of time. Sometimes we had to choose a simpler tool within our LMS’ constraints and compromise.

It was challenging to simply plug in pieces and run day by day. Everyday we would notice things we would change or resources that we would ideally leverage to support students. However, there just wasn’t time to locate such resources or such resources didn’t currently exist.

Given the uncertainty around the COVID-19 situation, the lessons learned from using emergency remote teaching will be helpful in planning for fully online iterations of our course in the event we need to continue with fully online distance teaching.

TELE Synthesis: Connections to Engineering Design

In a colleague’s post, she mentioned how the TELEs do the same thing. I realized that this has strong parallels with engineering design! The function of the TELEs is the same, but the means of achieving the function are different.

Engineering Design Example

I think this analogy will help illuminate how achieving the same function through different means leads to a different experience.

In the case of the TELEs, we want our students to learn. In my example, we’ll start with a client statement and translate it into some engineering terms.

Client Statement: I want a bag to carry my stuff.

Client Need: Transport of mass

Function: Transport mass

Although the client wants a bag, the function is actually to transport mass. Here are some possible solutions:

a bag
a cart
a delivery service
a personal assistant
a sled led by dogs

Although some of these solutions appear nonsensical, they can all achieve the same function. However, the experience will be different for each one. What I haven’t considered in the design example is the broader considerations (e.g., objectives, constraints) and other aspects like the stakeholders and service environment. These considerations would impact the recommended solution.

Parallels to TELEs

In our case, the TELEs share the same function of learning. However, the means to achieve this are different. The locus of action (who is doing the constructing?) and how this is occurring (e.g., activity, concepts) differ.

The TELEs can be used in conjunction with each other. The selection and design of the TELEs will depend on the teacher, students, availability of technology, time, and other classroom requirements.

SKI vs. LfU: It’s starting to make more sense

I’m glad that a peer commented on my confusion of SKI vs. LfU and has helped me better understand the difference.

SKI – focusses on creating materials to promote integration. It does not necessarily need to include activities

LfU – focusses on creating activities for each learning objective through the cycle of motivation (demand, curiousity), knowledge construction (observe, communicate), knowledge refinement (apply, reflect)

As I look at this again, SKI appears to be more cognitivist as it’s focussing on how the material is organized and mapping out the learning journey. This makes sense for WISE as a plug and play/re-mix platform for other users to modify. SKI focusses on scaffolding and opening potential opportunities for inquiry, but this is more dependent on the learner to take action.

In contrast, LfU appears to link itself more to trying to solve a problem and taking learning into an applied field. This project/problem based approach is more constructivist. As students may end up learning different concepts or pushing their inquiry in a different direction, the learning opportunities are more diverse. The LfU cycle causes students to take option because of the motivation step.

TELEs and the SAMR Model

At the beginning of term, I was still struggling with the value of substitution. Now that we are looking at TELEs, I’m starting to see how substitution can be valuable especially when I recognize that we are often constrained by the medium and its affordances.

When we discussed how the current learning tools on the web are primarily instruction and drill based, there was a hint of disappointment that there isn’t much diversity in the available TELEs. Making a TELE is hard and the existing tools available should not be discounted.

When looking at the drill based tools (e.g., games), a reductionist perspective hints that this is just an online quiz. However, students like playing these games and become more engaged with them. The feelings towards playing do impact the experience.

Drill based tools are also useful. Practice is important. Improving lower order skills is important in preparing learners for higher order tasks.

Getting Trapped in the Default Affordances of a Medium

Default settings are really useful. For new users, these settings are often enough to suit their needs and complete whatever tasks they have. But default can be limiting if we never move beyond it. Although software ideally goes through user testing, the default features may exist for different reasons (e.g., the software constraints of the time) rather than the purpose of the tool. Although the default parameters may be enough, the user should not be constrained to these affordances and needs to break free.

In my instructional design role, I do my authoring through Articulate Rise. I really like Rise, it’s clean, it’s fast, it does what I want it to as long as I live within its preset blocks. It has been frustrating at times, like when it did not support native tables (tables are now a thing in Rise) and how it still does not support writing math equations. I’ve started to notice that I have to turn down specific requests from subject matter experts because of Rise’s current limitations. This shouldn’t be the way creating an experience should be like. The subject mater experts have PCK and are looking to create specific types of activities. Although we can work within the parameters of Rise, I’ve begun to notice that I have been artificially trapping myself within the default affordances.

When exploring examples of WISE and its authoring system, I noticed that just by having free text responses, the mindset towards creating an e-module shifted. In the WISE authoring system, students can type up their own responses and then re-visit these. Although this doesn’t seem like a huge shift, it’s important to me because Rise’s pre-set blocks don’t allow for this. Thankfully, by recognizing this gap and further exploring Rise, I know that we can design similar types of experiences, although by connecting to other tools.

Meritorious Post – Module A

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.

Definition of Technology

Feenburg’s definition of technology made the most sense to me:

Feenburg (1999, 2003) suggests that technology is the medium of daily life in modern societies. His impression is that technology is humanly controlled and value-laden just like a social institution.

Humanly controlled – I currently see technology as an extension of the self. Technology can make completing specific tasks easier and offer other representations. It can act as a cognitive tool so that the user/human can focus on a higher order skill. Overall, technology is a tool that is exercised through human autonomy. However, the extension of the self will have different representations depending upon the medium.

Value-laden – Given our current technological scene, there are a variety of technological media that range from books, chalkboards, computers, probes, and specific software. With “old school” media, like books, it was a little odd to think of this as technology because its advancement was so long ago. However, the printing press is a huge technological advancement. In the classroom, the selection of a specific technology may speak to values connected to accessibility, socioeconomic status, discipline preferences, and philosophical preferences.

Technology does not equate to advancement. The creation and use of technology often contains artifacts of what society at the time values.

Week 3: Interview Reflection Post

From the interview discussion thread, the overall themes that I’ve seen arise are:

There isn’t enough time or training for using technology in the classroom
- Funding and rapid changes with technology make it difficult for schools to keep up
Technology can be a distraction
- There are challenges with the everyday vs. academic use of technology
Teacher attitudes towards technology impact its integration in the classroom
- If a teacher is resistant to technology and doesn’t see its utility, then it will be poorly integrated if at all
- Peers who have posted about integrated PD and mentorship have mentioned that they are poorly used. This is due to competing priorities with the need for prep. Given a busy teacher schedule, technology and new pedagogy are often lower priority than the immediate classroom survival.
Technology enables multiple representations of learning and discipline specific use
- From using technology in assignments to get students to develop digital skills and engage in a platform to practice digital citizenship, technology leads to opportunity
- When materials are scarce or specific experiences are not possible, VR, video, and other digital archives/worlds are important

Change in understanding of issues

What I’ve been seeing from the discussions so far is that technology isn’t always the topic. Connected topics, like training, pedagogy, and access to technology, are often what comes up instead.

I wonder if these conversations are partially reflections of teacher attitudes:

it’s too hard to do this alone
there are too many competing priorities, we need to focus on surviving

There is a desire to improve teaching and learning with technology, but the lack of training, time, and funding seem to limit the implementation.

It’s also important to consider the context in which most of my colleagues are discussing. Many are working in the public sector in elementary and secondary schools. In these contexts, there may be less choice in what a teacher can do (e.g., the curriculum is set, technology is selected at the board level) and there are many responsibilities put onto one person. In my context, we are very lucky to have a teaching team and staff to work on supporting our course. With this brings different reporting structures and the transition to get support, but there are many steps in place. The funding available for technology is also different. I find that at a large post-secondary institution there are more avenues to get access to technology that may not be as available for others.

I’m curious as to how the role of outreach between institutions and schools can be better leveraged. This could be a nice connection to inform everyone’s practice, but I recognize that this is difficult and depends on location and funding.

Week 3: Case Study Reflection

Something I’ve been noticing from our course discussions so far, that has been really highlighted in the Case Study thread, is that we aren’t talking about technology. Of course, there is discussion around technology and tools that people are using, but a lot of the discussion is really connected to pedagogy and training.

So far the larger themes that have emerged from the conversations are:

Training
Skepticism surrounding use of technology
The changing role of the teacher

Training

There’s been a lot of commentary about how there isn’t enough training on how to use technology in the classroom. A challenge that many have been highlighting is that it takes a lot of time for the teacher to learn how to use the technology, how to use it for teaching, and then implement it into the classroom. From the sounds of it, many of our classmates have been experiencing teacher as DIY lone rangers.

From a public high school perspective, I can understand what the sentiments for better training. As a newer teacher, I know that my teacher’s college experience didn’t provide a ton of training on technology. We did have a really useful workshop on technology with different breakout sessions. I don’t know if there’s a way for teacher’s colleges to present everything teachers would ever need to know. At the same time, something that a professional teacher needs to demonstrate is professional knowledge and the willingness and commitment to ongoing professional development. In the mind of a pre-service teacher, directly applicable skills and the how-to are so important. Pre-service teachers need this context and sometimes the more theoretical aspects of teacher’s college can be lost. There really needs to be a balance between these competing priorities.

Linking back to technology, there are so many moving pieces. Even if a teacher candidate is “trained” with a specific device, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a public school has access to this technology or the same model of the device.

Learning how to be a teacher doesn’t end at teacher’s college. Future formal and informal learning opportunities are required to hone our practice. A really interesting suggestion from a classmate was that teachers could be required to take specific courses to be re-certified after a specific time period. I don’t know if I agree with this because this could be very expensive and I don’t know how this could be implemented. In some ways, it looks like an added layer of responsibility being added to what teachers must do.

I’m all for learning about technology and pedagogy and their implementation in the classroom, but I wonder about the push back and how this could impact informal learning. I wouldn’t want these mandatory paid courses to negatively impact the perception of training and continuing development. Instead, I think a strong culture of community of practice would be very helpful. This helps to maintain the academic freedom for teachers, while encouraging teachers to learn and develop more. The community of practice could also be integrated within the existing culture and transition into professional teaching. Perhaps newer teachers are paired with mentor teachers. The pairing could be done based on interests and include a school community of practice.

Skepticism around technology

There’s been commentary around the reliance of technology and technology as a substitute.

For example, the case where graphing calculators are shown to students and used before students learn how to graph was seen as problematic. In this case, there were concerns about students not actually knowing what they were doing and are just using the calculators to get the answer. Here I wonder if the learning objectives have really been achieved if students don’t know what they are doing. I think the calculators can be useful in supporting students in their zone of proximal development (e.g., solving harder problems, and focussing upon the logic). However, a counter argument could be that students always have access to technology.

In terms of technology being a substitute, it can be difficult to see what its role is when we look at a lesson from a reductionist perspective. Yes, technology can make things faster, it can simplify tasks, and in some cases, it does look like it’s merely there. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean we should discount its utility and role in the classroom. From a pragmatic perspective, technology is here to stay and students should learn how to work with and around it.

Something that I’m noticing is that although the activities we do may be more technology enhanced, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the products that students produce are changing. Perhaps this also needs a re-think.

The changing role of the teacher

I wouldn’t say that technology makes everyone an expert, because there are discipline specific skills and knowledge that may not be picked up by a novice. Instead, technology can help anyone access an expert. With this, the teacher role can shift to more of a facilitator. If an activity leverages collaboration and peer-to-peer instruction, the teacher could check in on the groups.

In the most ideal case, I don’t think a classroom is full of only teacher-instruction or peer-instruction, instead I think learning will cycle between the two.