1. What would you say was your key defining ICT quality when you filled out the questionaire?
I would say my biggest ICT quality coming into this class was my willingness to stay open-minded and to become more connected in social and digital media. Like many others, I am quite overwhelmed as well but the willingness and positivity toward ICT development and improving my connected-self is still inside me and I am enjoying my journey because I am learning so much!
How were you ideas about ICT in school settings influenced by “Why School”
My views of ICT in schools was quite negative before reading this book. My biggest issues were, and still are to some degree, funding and time. I came into this class wanting to know everything possible about digital literacy in schools so I can become the person students come to in the library for help with all technology and I still feel this way. But considering everything we have learned already in one week, I am worried that I will never have the time to teach all of these thing. After reading the book, I realized this isn’t going to happen overnight and that I just need to do as much as I can to incorporate digital literacy into my teaching whenever possible. The other issue I have is funding. How are we going to be able to afford all of this new technology to improve digital equity in schools. I learned from Richardson that the only way to be hear is to “scream” and get administration and the community involved. This is exactly what we did at our school this last year and received a $4500 grant from our district for technology. With this money we purchased a 3D printer and 12 mini ipads for the library learning commons, which I am so excited about!
3. When you think about the cognitive, cultural, and technological dimensions of our connected selves, what stands out?
I still struggle with these terms and what they mean for me. What I got from our lesson was that cognitive is everything that goes on inside you, cultural means what is going on among all entities, and technology is always changing because of the cognitive and cultural. I feel you must have a confident and positive cognitive connected-self in order to want to use technology and become involved in the cultural dimension.
4. How do you define technology and information literacy today?
I have been using the “media smarts” website to define all types of literacy for myself. I find it to be very clear in explaining the differences and the connectives between them. www.mediasmarts.ca
5. What conceptual developments will I take away from this class as I move forward?
I feel the biggest concept I will take away from this class is the need to be and stay connected and to continue to teach digital and social connections and literacy skills to my students because no matter the obstacles (funding, time etc), education is moving in the direction of inquiry and technology, so we must all continue to evolve with the changes.
6. What inquiry topics am I considering for next week?
Because inquiry has become a major goal at my school, I plan on focusing on inquiry-based learning and technology next week. I want to see how I can become involved in these inquiry projects as TL.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have similar concerns. I felt relieved that I wasn’t the only one having difficulties with the definitions of the cognitive, cultural, and technological dimensions of our connected selves. How I’ve come to conceptualize the dimensions:
Cognitive – how we’re thinking about connecting to others
Cultural – what we’re doing to connect to others
Technology – what we’re using to connect to others
That’s my own personal definition, and I’m still struggling with the idea of them. Hopefully we’ll come to a clear understanding of them in the coming days.
Also, with this “learning, unlearning and relearning” that we’re doing, it would be interesting to see if some of our responses are the same after the course is over.
Having an open-minded attitude toward digital technologies is a very important quality to foster in education. There have been so many policy and technological initiatives that have not made sense to teachers and have caused a culture of non-use to evolve. It is gratifying to have a recent example of teacher-led technology acquisition. This is a very important development in the field. Educators need to provide leadership to students, because there is no one else in society that is providing guidance to the social, cultural, political, environmental, economic, etc. possibilities of our involvements with ICT. Inquiry-based learning and technology is a great topic choice! I look forward to seeing what you learn!