Category Archives: A. Unpacking assumptions

I think that for technology to be effectively used in the classroom (science or otherwise), technology should enhance or add opportunities for learning.  For example, considering the use of a computer to type up a lab report rather than writing it by hand may be neater, but is not enhancing the learning opportunity.  On the other hand, the use of digital reflections helps to enhance learning by increasing the opportunity for students to share ideas in a community of learning.  Digital simulations may allow students the chance to explore situations not accessible in a regular classroom such as theoretical physics concepts or modelling the invisible molecules of life or a chemical reaction or an aspect of gene control.  PhET has some excellent simulations that will help to address some misconceptions such as the mass of gases, or conservation of mass in a reaction.  There is nothing wrong with using technology for its own sake, but students are so constantly exposed to tech, that I believe there should be a justified use of tech on the basis of contributing something beyond the regular experience.  There are many online websites and activities that students can explore at their own pace, supporting differentiated learning or providing a sense of a lab scenario that would be possible in a classroom setting.  DNAi.org is a website dedicated to genetics with video clips, historical background and activities exploring our understanding of DNA and genetics processes and how we learned this.  NASA for Kids is another example of student-driven exploration of the solar system.  Other examples is using tech to extend student work such as the use of e-portfolios, video or animation creation, or course wikis.  This past year, I was able to obtain laptops for my classroom, and students can now watch videos at their own pace (rewinding or pausing as necessary), participate in a learning community using reflections/discussions, a knowledge forum, wiki contributions, and a digital artifact assignment, as well as contributing to daily lessons through collaborative slide shows or presentations.  To me these types of activities extend the learning, rather than maintaining status quo but with a screen.

I believe good use of technology is anything that adds value to the activity. In this way, the use of technology is just like any tool. I am a huge fan of Alice Keeler (Ed Tech guru) who consistently asks the question does technology make the experience better for the student? If the answer is no, then upgrade the activity. There are simply way too many teachers out there that assume tech in all cases adds value and it isn’t the case. Without strong pedagogy you have nothing.

The best example of this I can think of is my own school, which went 1-1 this year with chrome books. During the first two weeks, we had some trouble with the vendor and getting the books in the hands of the students. I had a teacher who was livid, claiming “he could not teach without technology.” My response was, “you shouldn’t be proud of admitting that.” What it says is the technology teaches for you and that is not what technology in the classroom is for. He went on say he doesn’t want to be one of those teachers who “just gives out boring worksheets in class”. I, of course, explained you don’t have to be and all the ways one can do engaging activities without a 1-1 classroom. However, when I did a review of the activities he was doing I had to ask the question in each case, how does this activity upgrade the learning experience? What I discovered was the activities he was doing were essentially online worksheets. The only value they added was they were paperless, yet it was assumed this was best practice.

To me technology needs to support inquiry and higher level thinking. It needs to provide options for students to express and create. It must go beyond simply automating tasks or mundane flashiness. Technology always has to be a tool in the hands of critical thinkers. The tool is necessary often but the one wielding the tool is always the most important.

From my experience, good digital technology must meet at least one of the following criteria.  

First off, digital technology needs to help students develop a mental model for some intangible phenomena.  I can remember how confusing it was to learn DNA transcription & translation and protein synthesis from a textbook when I was in grade 12.  The text was dry and the diagrams confusing.  Today, students have access to incredibly detailed videos on Youtube that animate unseeable events that occur throughout our body.  The short video linked below, for instance, has helped me dramatically improve my mental model of protein synthesis and has left me with a more honest understanding of this process.

https://youtu.be/TfYf_rPWUdY

Second, good digital technology allows learners to manipulate variables and experiment in order to test predictions and find patterns.  Hands-on activities are fantastic educational tools but they are often unrealistic or require too much setting up.  I often use PHET simulations as a fun way to introduce topics in Physics.  Check out this simple simulation on buoyancy.  Think of the rich discussion and great questions this very simulation can promote.

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/density-and-buoyancy/buoyancy_en.html

Third, good digital technology provides instantaneous feedback for students.  Learning math from a textbook is painful at times.  Searching for solutions in the back of the book can be soul crushing.  I have found online learning platform, such as Khan Academy, so much more engaging for students.  I challenge you to open this link to a Khan Academy skill and not want to solve the first question.  The addiction students feel towards instantaneous feedback in the mathematics classroom, is a sign that it has been a long time missing.

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/basic-geo/basic-geo-area-and-perimeter/area-trap-composite/e/area-of-quadrilaterals-and-polygons

Fourth, good digital technology should promote joy, inquiry, curiosity and wonder into the classroom.  There are so many fantastic resources that bring life back into the classroom.  None, however, quite like Kahoot.  It is scary sometimes how jazzed students get over Kahoot.  Google Earth is another digital technology that inspires curiosity, wonder, and exploration in the classroom.  

https://create.kahoot.it/

Finally, good digital technology allows students to create, share and collaborate.  As Dr. Ken Robinson argues, we need to infuse creativity back into the classroom.  Digital technology such as Tinkercad, is a fantastic program that allows students to create 3D digital renderings and later print them out on a 3D printer.  From my experience, when students are given the opportunity to match understanding with creativity, magic happens in the classroom.

https://www.tinkercad.com/  

There are certain characteristics of bad technology that I would like to highlight.  First off, bad technology is poorly designed and unintuitive to operate.  The learning curve to understand the technology requires to much processing power from the student that they lose interest.  Second, bad technology is technology that does not enhance learning but simply replaces traditional activities.  Using digital textbooks, for instance, does nothing to enhance the learning experience.

The Pendulum Misconception

One misconception that I have noticed when teaching pendulum motion in Physics is that students often believe that the period of the bob is a product of its weight and its initial angle of displacement, with lighter bobs and greater angular displacement of the bob both correlated to longer periods.  With the right equipment on hand, these are fantastic misconceptions to disprove with a quick demonstration.  The challenges arise when two pendulums swing at once as they often hit each other and it is challenging to measure the angle of distortion with much accuracy.  The demonstration at least provides students a chance to ponder if all pendulums have the same period and if not, what variables affect the rate of swing?  I then have students test their assumptions by using the following Phet simulations.  

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/pendulum-lab/latest/pendulum-lab_en.html    

In my opinion, this simulation ticks all the boxes for good digital technology.  First off, the simulation allows students to witness unseeable phenomena such as how pendulums operate under various gravitational field strengths while allowing students to experiment and manipulate variables (bob weight, pendulum length and angle of distortion).  Finally, the simulation provides instantaneous feedback for students and inspires curiosity, wonder, and experimentation.  This simulation stimulates creativity and collaboration as students must build connections between what they saw during the demonstration and experienced with the simulation.

The effective implementation of digital technology can support learning in many ways.  I am not of the mindset that it should attempt to support learning in all ways.  The use of digital technology in the classroom should be done so to augment, modify and redefine specific learning tasks.  Teachers should be wary of digital technology that acts as a learning tool substitute and fails to provide any functional change (Puentedura, 2010)

References:

Puentedura, R. (2010). SAMR and TPCK: Intro to advanced practice. Retrieved February, 12, 2013.

Using educational technology can enhance the learning in the classroom. Technology should be used to enhance learning and not be used just to keep students “busy”. There should be a specific objectives and a purpose for why technology is being used within the classroom. I often refer to Bates’ SECTIONS model when integrating technology within my class.

Since I specialize in teaching numeracy, I often integrate technology for teaching math. For example, I create interactive lessons using Nearpod. This creates engaging and interactive lessons for the students. By using this method of teaching lessons, I am able to track student progress as their answers get saved and documented. We are also able to share answers with each other as other students answers can be shared on devices (which the teacher controls) so all students can see how different students solve differently and collaborate. This is extremely helpful in numeracy as students all have different ways of solving math questions. From here, this work can then be posted on FreshGrade (online digital portfolio) which our school and district uses for reporting and staff, parents and students can reflect on the learning. My students also enjoy having access to virtual manipulatives and numeracy apps which allows them to further enhance their skills. Many of my older students enjoy watching tutorial videos on Khan Academy to review math concepts that they require more repetition with.

Using and integrating technology is definitely realistic. Many of the classrooms in my school have flexible learning environments where there is always access to technology. The biggest challenges with using technology is that sometimes it is not reliable. Further, having equal access to technology to use within the classroom is difficult. Other challenges also include students not knowing how to use the technology while other students have strong digital literacy skills. Teachers comfort level with using and implementing technology can also be a challenge. Opportunities for professional development for educators to explore technology is essential, especially for seasoned professionals who are more traditional with their teaching practice and may not be comfortable with using and integrating technology within their practice.

Technology in education exists to enhance our understandings, and good use of technology would do just that. Working at the substitution levels of the SAMR model implies that technology is being used to elaborately and expensively reinvent the wheel. Good use of technology should make a learning experience transformative, in that the opportunity would not have been possible if not for this tool. In a classroom, this is tricky because the tools themselves are in a constant state of evolution. They are expensive, can take time to implement, and take expertise to troubleshoot when there are issues. None of these factors make it easy, but certainly the skills and understandings gleaned from the tools make it worth it- if they are being used effectively.

Good technology helps not only visualize but also engage. I don’t know what the design of such a classroom space would look like, but certainly the students would feel comfortable enough exploring and challenging the curriculum and their own understandings with technology. With a previous 2^nd grade class and as part of a teaching team, we taught a unit on landforms and talked a lot about how they are created. In looking at their prior knowledge, many of the students believed that mountains simply existed, or that they were built up over time, rather than eroding. We talked at length about tectonic plates, did lots of experiments to demonstrate how they are formed. It wasn’t until we had the opportunity to go to a university nearby, and ‘play’ with their augmented reality sandbox, that some of them started to change their ideas about how mountains are ‘built’. The technology in this case helped some of the students who could not visualize how erosion worked, and helped us see how factors like extended amounts of time can affect a geographic location. Even the passing of that much time is a difficult concept for the students to grasp, so this tool helped many of them make a pretty big leap.

Recognizing that this isn’t typical of most classrooms, I feel very lucky that my students had the opportunity to ‘play’ and figure out how erosion works. I’m certainly not naïve enough to believe that everyone left that year with a perfect understanding of tectonic plate movement, but the technology definitely enhanced their ability to explain the concepts, and additionally piqued their interest for more research. I think that access to these kinds of resources is likely the biggest challenge.

In my opinion, good use of technology would encourage and motivate students to explore questions that they may have and use technology to enhance their understanding of those questions and answers. A good use of technology would also allow for collaboration with other learners and personalize learning; it would provide a means of differentiated instruction for students. For example, if Student A was ahead in math and Student B was having difficulties, the use of technology could help Student B to understand those math complexities that were not being understood before. There are many fantastic math apps and games that allow learners to go at their own pace and really breaks down the math problem into parts allowing learners to have a more thorough understanding.

This learning experience would give confidence to those students who may be lacking it and the learning environment would be a very comfortable one where students can ask questions without feeling like they are being judged by other students and in some cases, the teacher. When I was in college, I took a math course where we used a program called ALEKS (Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces); this was a web-based, artificially intelligent assessment and learning system that used adaptive questions to determine what a student knows and what they do not know. ALEKS then instructs the student on the topics he/she is ready to learn. This type of program really helped me to take the time to understand the question and the best part was that I could go at my own pace. I was confident and really enjoyed math (for the first time!) and that is how the learning environment would look and feel like in the above situation.

This is a good use of digital technology because it is putting the learner first. I do not think this is a vision as many teachers have already started to implement different kinds of digital technologies into their classrooms to enhance student learning. However, with that being said, one of the challenges that I can see is the hesitation of some of the older generation of teachers. I have come across this in my own school. There seems to be a fear of using technology for some teachers because they do not understand how to use it; there needs to be training involved if we want to see everyone get on the same page and really use technology for all of its uses.