We were presented with the following description of Case 10…
You are teaching in your practicum grade level in a large urban school. The population is diverse in terms of socioeconomic status, home languages and ethnicities. In your class of 25 students there are a range of needs, including two children who have been designated as “gifted”, one student who has a development disability and one student with Asperger’s syndrome.
This year you made a commitment to yourself to integrate technology more thoroughly into all aspects of your program. Your inspiration came from a dynamic workshop you attended over the summer that was all about integrating technology to be transformative rather than simply replacing pencil and paper. You left the week with your head swimming with the possibilities of Twitter, Padlet, blogs, Skype, stop motion animation, Garageband, etc. You have a suspicion that these technologies can be used to meet the needs and interests of your exceptional learners and are excited to explore this further. You also decide to connect with the District SETBC liaison to determine your students’ needs for assistive technology. You are excited about fostering a critical awareness of how media influences how we see the world and ourselves.
You are less certain how technology can be used to engage ELLs. After all, you’ve already checked out several websites aimed at teaching ELLs that seem to be mainly focused on adults living overseas, and on grammar. Others talk about “accent reduction,” as if an ELL’s accent is a problem. Another concern you have is based on a lesson you once observed: while the whole class was engaged in an interesting discussion about a book they were all reading, the two ELLs were off to the side, filling in the blanks of a grammar exercise on the computer. How can technology be used to support ELLs’ learning and allow them to be fully integrated into the classroom community?
You have decided to use the curriculum as a starting point to began integrating technology in a meaningful way into your teaching, including areas such as core French, math, science, social studies and the arts. You have used the BC Ministry of Education’s new work on digital literacy and digital citizenship to frame your teaching, but notice that your students don’t seem to be taking up their own engagement with movies, video games, advertisements and social media in a critical way. You wonder how you can use the popular culture and technologies in which they are already immersed to implement a more explicitly critical media literacy education. How might it be possible to move students, teachers and society from passive consumers to active producers of new meaning and identities?
Several ethical issues have arisen – some that you had anticipated and others that you did not. At the beginning of the year some parents came to you with concerns about privacy and security, because their children are uploading content to the Internet. You carefully investigated the district and provincial policies and spoke with your school administrator. You came up with a plan, but realize now that you also need to think about disparities in access. Some of your students have multiple computers, tablets and phones to augment their schoolwork, while others have none. And these two ethical issues are just the tip of the iceberg!
You’ve also been thinking about how to balance the use of technology with time outside connecting with the natural world. You’ve heard that the Ministry of Education is very supportive of “nature-connect” learning (notably through the elementary years in Science, Social Studies and as an interdisciplinary theme) and wonder how you might help your students to find balance between the wired and wild worlds.
Now you are two terms in and realizing incorporating technology is more complicated than wheeling in a cart of shiny new iPads…