I watched the videos for a few of the case studies specifically 2, 3,  and 5. They gave me a glimpse of how far education has come over the years.  I noted down a few similarities and differences that teachers pointed out in one way or another from their experiences though the settings were different.

• Teachers pointed out that the technologies integrated into their lessons helped greatly, aiding students with understanding content, and allowed teachers to get through materials faster without having to slow down or explain repeatedly.

This point seems quite important in my perspective as the curriculum covers a lot of material that can’t possibly be all taught without the school year unless teachers teach integrated lessons. The integrated lessons with the help of technology can present more content in a simpler method saving more time.

• The students were often pushed further as they worked with the technology, pushing them to make more connections and face challenges, take ownership of what they were learning

Pushing them further by making them challenge themselves more creates for more opportunities of exploration in the subjects.

• Teachers’ often acted as coaches and not information hubs, facilitating and setting goals instead of just regurgitating information to the students.

• A lot of time and effort is needed to create a successful program.

Another common factor in these learning environments is the noticeable great amounts of time that teachers have put into making the lessons work well with technology. Often times, the teachers in the videos started out being the first in their schools to use such integrated teaching methods and have to learn and “teach” as they go. The educators also notices the decreasing need for students to ask teachers for answers and coaches students in the lessons instead of give straight answers.

• The STEM learning environment creates an equal platform for all students in the classroom regardless of what background they came from.

As students now all come with different prior knowledge and different backgrounds, these STEM learning environments  due the integration of technology that most students in the classroom may not be familiar with, creates an equal learning environment for all students.

The biggest point I noticed with the videos is the mentions of how schools and school districts gain more technologies for classrooms every year, and the grades that are exposed to them are lowering every year. I understand that it’s to prep the students for future successes, but  I can’t help but wonder if is it really a good thing that the age of exposure keeps dropping?  It’s like how students now know how to find the definition for a word on google, but can’t use a dictionary. Or how a students needs to use their phone to figure our how many days it is till end of the month and when asked why they didn’t just do the math themselves, their reply was simply “Why do I need to do the math when an app/calculator can tell me on my phone”.  To have all these technological skills is great, but I can’t help but wonder what happens when all technologies stop working and humans have to use traditional “old-school” skills again.

I looked at asking them what they thought about using technologies in Math and Science classrooms, for teaching, for pedagogies, and difficulties.

Interviewee Sam, is a Secondary school teacher, who teaches full time at an International School. She teaches  International Students from all over the world English, Math, Science, and Psychology.  Below is a short abstract of her answers for each of the concepts I focused on.

Uses

• Do you use technology in your Math Science classes?
• How do you implement or integrate technology into your classroom?
• What are some new technologies that you would like to start using in your science and math classroom?

Sam found that she used technology in Science class more than she would in Math. She uses technologies like Powerpoint, Videos, Digital Documents, Cameras, and overhead projectors in her classrooms. Very simple and easy to use technologies to simplify uses. However, if given a chance she wouldn’t mind trying any program that would help her demonstrate concepts, for example, the Smartboard.

Different styles

• Do you think that the students do better with the technologies integrated into your lessons?

Sam agrees that technologies do help with learning. It gives the teacher a chance to try different teaching pedagogies and allows her to help students learning in various methods.

Support

• Does your administration support technology integration in your school? Do you feel you need to be an expert to integrate technology into the classroom?
• What are your biggest concerns when using technologies in the classroom to teach Math or Science?

Tech Support is important and crucial to the success of the implementation into classrooms. However, to Sam, though she knows that her school supports the use of technologies, she often thinks it’s a bit over her head. Her greatest concern is her lack of knowledge of the technology and feels that only experts can integrate technologies into the classroom.

This prior knowledge, fuels these personal theories developed by students and are often hard to overwrite and can take a long time to do so as they are personal and so “makes sense” to the students much more than something new being taught be the teacher. Most of the time, it’s easier to say “others just don’t understand my idea” than to really see that they’ve made a mistake in their theory because it “makes sense” to them. I believe that this challenge was very visible in Heather. Her theories made sense to her, so even though it was different from what the teacher taught after, she actually tweaked her theory instead of dumped her idea.

With advancements in technology and education, when Heather was later able to remember and recite the correct theory/answer with manipulatives next to her, it reminded me of the Multiple Intelligence Theory and how everyone learns differently, and manipulatives can be helpful for learning.  It helped when she had a 3D visual instead of the 2D representation she was asked to draw. This also made me see the manipulatives as technologies used in classrooms. Though not digital,  they were just as effective. When the manipulatives were first introduced to the classroom before the digital age, it was probably considered new media as well. But now, they are just regular mediums to have in a classroom, while new media are being introduced.

If the same “Four Seasons” question was to be asked by students now, they would have had the chance to learn the same material with digital media, so perhaps their answers may be different. Digital technology may have helped current students “see” the theory better, but may not help them understand or make internal connections though it might be easier.

Just a thought: Maybe that’s why we often find students not retaining course content as much as the need for them to make their own theories have decreased. As answers can just be googled.

The first time I used some form of technology to teach wasn’t for another few years. When I was in University, I had the chance to teach peers as  TechBytes Mentor, I taught my peers how to use programs that were commonly used in our Interactive Arts program that was hard to learn.  By then, having technology in classrooms was a norm, and it was now a competition as to which classrooms had the more advanced gears. But it wasn’t for another few years that I got to teach Math or Science using technologies, in a classroom. It was during my teaching practicum in Ontario. At that time, K-12 classrooms were equipped with Smartboards and so teachers had to learn how to use the boards. Because  I already had some exposure to the boards in University, I didn’t have as much trouble adjusting and learning the system. But I noticed many of the older staff, though had lots of teaching experience, struggled with using the technology to fulfill their needs. It became a situation where it wasn’t the technology helping the teacher teach more effectively, but that the teacher adapting to what functions they know on the boards to teach a bit of what they want.

I know what I mentioned isn’t new, and is a problem we all see, but I wonder how everyone approached this type of problem when it’s faster to only use a few functions of a technology to teach, rather than spend more time learning first.