For my interview, I interviewed Mr.H, a colleague at my current school. Mr.H and I have been colleagues for two years now and have enjoyed a few ventures exploring technology at our school. Last year, he was assigned to a grade 4/5 class and we often participated in co-teaching lessons involving technology as buddy projects. This year, he has taken on the tech teacher role at our school and is responsible for all of the digital technology. He has been teaching for the past 8 years and has spent time teaching in the States, overseas and has now settled in the lower main land.
We conducted our interview at 3pm after school on a Friday. It ran about 30 minutes with a few interruptions from other colleagues. As we conducted the interview, I was surprised and intrigued by the experiences he had with technology during his professional development program and how he uses his understanding to plan lessons with technology now. The three main themes that came to mind as I reflected on our interview were: failure is ok, collaboration throughout the school, and plan for the skill.
Failure is OK!
- Research has indicated that teachers are hesitant to integrate technology into their practice due to the perceived lack of support and personal experience. How would you describe your experience in developing a sense of confidence when implementing technology into the classroom?
| Quotes | Reflection |
| “Something that I experienced in my PDP program and the teaching experiences that I have prior to coming to Canada to teach. Was this notion of try it out and if it fails whatever at least you tried. It isn’t going to work right the first time but when it does it is going to be awesome!… It is going to take more than one time.”
“We have all had lessons that failed and it can be scary to go back there. And with technology there is such a steep learning curve and the chance of failure is higher.”
“I am ok with failing.”
“As the years have progressed I have felt more, I feel like I don’t give the primaries enough credit as they are due for their skills on this type of thing. So although I felt more hesitant with my 2/3’s than my 4/5’s, I am learning that we can work through it no matter the grade. It is about being confident with your group”
|
To begin our interview, I asked Mr.H to reflect on his initial experience with technology. We discussed at length his experience in the professional development program, and his experiences teaching outside of the lower main land. He said that his experience with technology could be characterized by the phrase: try it, if it fails, oh well. We both giggled but this idea of failing really resonated with me. As a young student myself, I was always told that failure was not an option, getting things wrong was just not acceptable. I believe that this has carried with me as I now begin my professional journey as the teacher.
The reality of technology is that things will almost never work the way you thought it would. Whether it be a technical issue, students understanding more or less than you expected, or many more reasons, technology can be a scary/frightening tool. It is therefore understandable why teachers can be reluctant to explore it. However, Mr.H was persistent when explaining how critical it is for teachers to make the first step and just try. As the year continues with a group of students, both the teacher and student will develop in their skills and it will only get better year to year. |
COLLABORATION throughout the school
- How do you think the school/district has helped or hindered your implementation of technology in the classroom?
| Quote | Reflection |
| “These are important skills for our students to learn but where do I take the time? I would be perfectly happy taking an hour out of the day to work on these things: coding, modeling and life skills that I think they are going to need. But what is coming out?”
“When we remove math, reading, science the teachers in intermediate are frustrated with what we are focusing on. So it is my personally opinion that it needs to be a complete shift as a school goal.”
“Resources and funding are important but support is more important. And not necessarily support from admin because that comes in whatever direction it will. It is support from my colleagues. It is support to be able to say ‘you know what we think that this is important’ and for people to understand that in order for this to happen, something is going to suffer.”
“Everyone be on board.”
|
As the interview continued, we moved the discussion from how he felt as an individual using technology, to how the school community was effecting the implementation. A common term entered the conversation was time. He truly felt that as educators we are expected to follow a check list. A list of things that need to be taught each year so that the students can progress in a linear fashion. Mr.H believes that “when it comes to being able to use computers and use programs is so very important. Those things need to be taught, explicitly taught.”. This meant that in order for teachers to spend the necessary time on teaching digital literacy, something else was going to have to give.
Now although Mr.H felt comfortable in forgoing other topics, or integrating skills like patterning (a skill typical associated with math) into coding, the concern was that other teachers would not feel the same way. For instance, teachers in the intermediate classes feeling frustrated that although the students are equipped with tech skills, they are lacking in content in other areas. It is therefore his belief, that the school needs to make a shift and collaborate on an area of focus for the entire school (technology, environmental learning, social emotional learning, etc.); as well, come to a consensus on the acceptable repercussions of time being spent on this. |
Plan for the SKILL!
- What tips or strategies would you suggest to teachers looking to introduce STEM into their classroom? In what ways can they introduce different subjects or topics into a joint project?
| Quotes | Reflection |
| “I think that a big part of that, and how I have always planned my units and lessons is, what is the thing that I want them to do? What skill do I want them to develop?”
“Ok lets do research skills. Well to do that they need to know how to work a search engine. Ok well what content am I going to attach to this, ok animal life cycles, science.”
“There is a lot of flash in a lot of products. And it doesn’t necessarily take it to another level… something I have to ask myself is is this going to provide them with a skill that they are going to need in the future. I think something like coding, which is flashy, but it is functional. Using programs where you have to build something for the 3-D printer, functional.”
“What are the skills you want them to learn, so when it comes to STEM or technology portions, it is finding what skill you want to focus on and then fitting in other stuff. You need to decide though if this is a skill that you are going to develop with or without tech and then move from there.”
“Content is fluid. It is starting with the skill and how you are going to teach that skill and then broadening out. Think of it as a web.”
|
As a teacher ready to take the necessary steps to implement technology more effectively in my room, I was interested to know how to go about accomplishing this. His recommendations were simple and followed a linear plan. He recommended beginning by identifying the skill that you want your students to walk away with. This could be research skills, communication skills, etc. Following, we need to decide which, if any, types of technology are necessary for this skill. Meaning, that it is not always necessary to integrate technology into every lesson or unit. He believes that technology needs to be used purposefully, not as another box on a check list. Once the teacher has identified the skill and technology, then we can move to attach content. He recommended this process because he believes that content is fluid and the connections are endless.
He used the example of a research project he was working on with his grade 2/3 students. -The skill: research -The technology tool: Google search engines -The content: life cycles of an owl From here, he was able to set out lessons that began with teaching students the literacy and skills needed to maneuver Google with a wide range of topics. Then, he introduced his major project and sent students to use these skills in a practical way. |
Shayla,
I love your organization of this post. It is brilliant! Thank you for your creativity!
As I read through your second point about collaboration throughout the school, it reminded me about a conversation I had with my Mom (also a middle years teacher) about a necessary shift in thinking.
She was lamenting about her students not starting sentences with capitals and not capitalizing the letter ‘i’ when referring to themselves. She said, “I know they are being taught these capitalization rules in every grade level before me. I know they are reading books where they see writing where these rules are modeled. Why can’t they just put it into practice?!?!?! It isn’t that they don’t know, it is that they won’t do it!”.
I replied, “It is because they don’t value it”.
“What?! That makes zero sense,” my Mom said.
I launched into an explanation that went something like this. It isn’t that they don’t know or even that they don’t care necessarily, it just isn’t something that they value. To them, capitals at the start of a sentence or a capitalized “i” do not prevent them from getting their message across, and that is the thing that they value most. Capitals and punctuation is something your generation values most, which is why it is so important to you and your colleagues. Your students are capable of writing with capitals and when they need it most, they will. I also don’t believe that someday we will be living in a world where ‘this generation’ continues to write without capitals. At this moment, it is not the thing they value most but it doesn’t make them less smart, incapable, or wrong. It just makes them different.
It is hard for us, as teachers and humans, to let some things go but I think we have to. If we don’t, are we doing these kids justice?
Hi Allison,
That is such a great example! I agree that students have a threshold for information that is important to them and that they will transfer into practice, and other information that almost goes over their head. I find at our school that the complaint is usually around student math understanding in the older grades. What is important to note for our school is that many of our students get little to no support at home, especially over the summer. So students spend months getting out of the routine of school and then the next teacher reads their work and becomes frustrated. Like you said, it is not necessarily that they do not know or remember, but that they need to be reminded and make it important enough for them to use it in practice.
Shayla
Hi Shayla,
I love the fact that he planned for skills and used technology to help facilitate that. Such an important distinction to make in good technology use; the breakdown in how its planned also makes it easier to understand and implement for teachers who might feel intimidated (going back to your first point). The idea of “thinking of it as a web”, to ensure that the content is fluid but the skills are transferred is something that can be adopted by the whole school, which helps teachers all the way through in managing expectations and proper technology usage.
I also really enjoyed the willingness to fail, and the desire to be open about with the other teachers. Great abstract!
Hi Amanda
Thank you for sharing. I agree that the “web” is something that can be implemented as a school. Our goal is to help some of our more timid teachers become more confident and willing to implement technology.
Shayla