Integrating Tranformative Technology

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 Increasingly, students’ lives outside are filled with advancing technology. This includes but is not limited to social media and pop-culture related games and media. Technology is also available in varying degrees to young children across cultures and languages, and is proven to help ELL students in particular as long as it is used in a meaningful, purposeful way that supplements classroom material. In an increasingly technologically advanced society, using technology across environments (home, school, social community) helps enhance children’s lives as well as their learning.

The Ministry of Education defines blended learning as technology-enhanced learning that is online and in the classroom–an effective approach to enhance education (BC Ministry of Education, Premiers’ Technology Council, 2010). Blended learning, learning that utilizes transformative technology, must be useful across home and classroom environments. Utilizing technology in meaningful ways is proven to help both ELLs and non-ELLs when supplementing language learning. Integrating transformative technology into the classroom narrows the gap between “non-ELL and ELL children in knowledge of words targeted during the intervention was closed, and the gap in general vocabulary knowledge” (Silverman & Hines, 2009). By allowing children to express and understand their learning in more than one way (i.e. more than reading and writing), educators can create more context to supplement the students’ learning. This type of multimodal learning is proven to benefit students, proven in the dual-coding theory (Paivio, 1986) and by the theory of synergy (Neumann, 1997). The dual-coding theory promotes the notion of presenting orality skills through two channels, the verbal and the non-verbal channels, which ultimately supports overall literacy development. Furthermore, the theory of synergy asserts that multimodal learning enhances childrens’ meaning-making abilities (Neuman, 1997).

 

Source: http://www.koooky.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/kids-learning.jpg

Source: http://www.koooky.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/kids-learning.jpg

 

However, before introducing primary students to new technology, we must focus on how communication is changing due to changing technology and the variability in meaning making in different cultural and social contexts. Integrating transformative technology into the classroom is ultimately a significant part of multiliteracies. We must acknowledge and understand the influence of increasing social, cultural and linguistic diversity on literacy and literate practices; and critical literacy. It is important that students understand how literacy is influenced by different perspectives, social, cultural, and technological factors. We must teach students to be literate through multimodal mediums, in socially responsible ways, and how to fully participate in life as active and informed citizens.

 

Resources:

B.C. Premier’s Technology Council. (2010). A Vision for 21st Century Education. Retrieved from http://www.gov.bc.ca/premier/attachments/PTC_vision%20for_education.pdf.

Silverman, R., & Hines, S. (2009). The effects of multimedia-enhanced instruction on the vocabulary of english-language learners and non-english-language learners in pre-kindergarten through second grade. Journal of Educational Psychology,101(2), 305-314. doi:10.1037/a0014217.

Transformation in a Wired World. (2016). Retrieved from https://blogs.ubc.ca/caseten/