A tasty analysis of my ETEC 533 experiences…
Apr 16th, 2009 by Steffanie Reid
Reading back through all my blog posts for ETEC 533 was an interesting experience. It was remarkable how my beliefs and opinions about technology use in education have evolved throughout the course. To explain the changes that I believe have occurred in my thinking I’m going to use a sweet analogy; the role of sugar in baking a cake!
When I think of cakes, the first thing that comes to mind is yummy, sugary frosting. At the beginning of this course I regarded technology use in education as fulfilling a similar role to frosting on a cake. I saw technology as a great, eye-catching way to sell a lesson to students. In my initial post reflecting on memories of technology, I remarked about how much fun I had using the new computer my parents brought home when I was young. In my subsequent post on the proper use of technology in education I remarked that “…good use of technology in the math and/or science classroom occurs when the technology serves to enhance a students learning experience…”. My choice of words in this post is very telling; I believed that technology could enhance the educational experience, not that it would be an integral part of it. In the same way that sugar frosting enhances the look and taste of a cake, I believed that technology could enhance a students’ educational experience. However, if you remove the frosting, a cake is still a cake, and in this way my beliefs on technology relegate it to an almost superfluous role in education. I didn’t see technology as a tool to be used as a component of teaching, but rather as a fun activity to provide once the real learning was complete.
I found the assignment to interview a colleague about their views on educational technology to be a very eye-opening experience. My colleague was of the opinion that technology use was not an option teachers could use to enhance their lessons, but rather was something integral to reaching the youth of today. Her use of web 2.0 applications to facilitate communication amongst her students was not something I had previously considered implementing in my classroom. After speaking with her, and completing course readings on various available web 2.0 applications, I began to see new ways to utilize technology. I realized that technology can have a role throughout the educational process, not just as a way to complete assignments. To continue the analogy to sugary icing; just as icing is applied between layers of cake while constructing the final dessert, so too can technology use be integrated throughout the course of a lesson.
At this point I was beginning to realize the myriad of ways that technology can be used in education. I then continued with course readings and came across Chris Dede’s comment that “technology is not a “vitamin” whose mere presence in schools catalyzes better educational outcomes”. This was a bit of a light bulb moment for me, as it made me consciously consider that while technology can facilitate many fantastic lessons, it is not itself inherently beneficial. The benefits of educational technology are realized only when it is implemented by a competent educator. It is very possible for someone to receive a good education without the use of digital technologies; graphing calculators are not required to learn math, computers are not vitally necessary to the creation of lab reports. A cake without icing is still a cake, perhaps not a very tasty or interesting one, perhaps not the type that a student would choose if given options, but a “naked” cake is still a cake. That being said, the addition of icing or digital educational technology will not necessarily make the cake better. The worlds most delicious icing, if just dumped on top of a cake, does not make the cake any better and may in fact ruin it. The most advanced technologies, if not properly introduced to students and integrated into the learning process, will not benefit a students’ education and may even detract from it as they struggle to simply understand how to use the technology.
Once I began to realize that educational technology could play an integral role in education, and that it was vitally important that it be integrated responsibly into the learning process, I was introduced to the various applications available. The applications that most caught my attention were those that afforded new ways for students to communicate and collaborate within the learning process. Applications such as the Jasper series, Planetary Forecaster and WISE all facilitate a constructivist, collaborative type of learning that I find very appealing. I’m still not entirely sure how to translate this style of teaching and learning to my senior chemistry courses, but it something that I am eager to try in my junior science classes. The study of science is truly the study of a process, and in order for students to realize this they need to personally take part in the collaborative process of science.
Further exploration of available technologies led to the final breakthrough in my opinion of the proper way to utilize technology in the classroom. Icing is not the only part of a cake that contains sugar. If cake represents a students learning or education, then it is vital to understand that a key ingredient within cake is sugar. By this I mean, that while technology works well as a means for students to complete assignments, explore simulations, etc. it can also play a role in the initial learning experience. Cake batter contains sugar and learning can be facilitated by technology. Reading about embodied learning and technology, specifically the example of the infectious disease lesson wherein students worked together to explore the process of disease propagation, I realized that technology can be integrated to such a degree within a lesson that it becomes an organic part of the lesson. In the disease unit, it would not have been possible for students to carry out the experiments in the way they did without the technology, yet the learning wasn’t focused on the technology itself, but rather on what the technology represented.
Technology is another tool in a good teachers’ repertoire, just as sugar is an ingredient in a Baker’s kitchen. This course has shown me that the use of technology must be carefully integrated into the learning process, so that it doesn’t replace vital components (such as basic math skills), yet that it is possible for it to play a major role in the learning process. While I used to regard educational technology as a means to complete assignments once the core learning has been done, I now see how it can become an integral part of education. Although we can educate without digital technology, and we can bake a cake without sugar, learning to properly integrate this new technology into our teaching will result in a better educational experience for our students or a much tastier cake!