Interestingly, I am writing my cover letter for my resume, in there I have included my teaching and technology philosophy. Here is my “vision” of good use of digital technology in the classroom.
Technology Philosophy– The future teacher should be expected to concentrate on the “facilitation” of factual knowledge that can be easily accessible by most students. In other words, teachers are focusing on being a facilitator of knowledge, and the technology helps the educator to specialize individual instruction. I believe technology will allow the learner to be involved in student-centred and project-based learning, which contributes to students to apply problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
As a special teacher, I see how technology can differentiate for all learners abilities. For instance, Google Read & Write allows the user to hear words, passages, or whole documents read aloud with easy-to-follow dual color highlighting. It also supports speech to text.
Ahmad, F. K. (2015) advocates that all learners should have “access to information, awareness, mainstream education curriculum, learning materials, assistive devices and the necessary support services can help students with disabilities in learning at par with their non-disabled peers in the common classroom, breaking down all barriers which prevent them from having equal access to quality education (p. 73). Technology allows for disabled students be engaged and empowered to be more involved in mainstream curriculum.
The challenges I face when implementing personalized technology tools is to find time the time train staff and students on the features of the tool. In saying that, school boards and administrators are beginning to give more time for training. Additionally, a few of the specialized apps or technology required further authorization from school boards to access them. Finally, sometimes I find these “new” tools become a fad or toy rather than a tool to help students access information or to communicate better.
Ahmad, F. K. (2015). Use of assistive technology in inclusive education: making room for diverse learning needs. Transcience, 6(2), 62-77