From the Classroom to the Gym (and back) – ETEC565A e-portfolio

Bryan Alexander (2014) envisions the early 21^st century as a “Renaissance” in education, and by the year 2024, classes are based around the students creating multimedia projects in various forms through developing rich content in gamified classroom structures. According to this vision, Alexander states that “games and social media are delivery mechanisms for curricular content. Much of the curriculum involves creation: storytelling, game making, collaborative media work” (2014). I feel that this vision of the future of technology integration within education is what interests and excites me the most. Within this particular area of emerging technologies, there exists a potential to engage and motivate our students in ways that create powerful connections between their learning and their own personal interests and values.

Game-based learning functions to leverage student engagement, achievement and collaboration opportunities in order to promote the development of communication and problem solving skills, as well as creativity and self-confidence. Gaming has played a significant role in the lives of our students outside of the school context for years, and likely many of us were once engaged (or perhaps still are engaged) through participating in gaming opportunities, whether they be system based, online or otherwise. With this prevalence of gaming in the lives of our students, beginning at seemingly early ages, how do we as educators build this interest into our own design thinking to create learning opportunities that enhance skill development and digital literacies?

To help facilitate the integration of game-based learning into classroom and educational settings, I hope that we can approach the notion of technologies for learners by creating opportunities for students to plan and design their own games through various programming and design options. Through student involvement in the design process of game-based learning, our students can utilize technologies that are designed to be flexible, customizable, and adaptive to learner needs, while supporting students in planning for and achieving their own personal goals.

Despite the benefits of enhanced student engagement and motivation, and the development of skills in creativity, problem solving and collaboration, technologies for learners (including programming) have been slow to gain entry into formal educational settings, as their integration necessitates major changes in school cultures. In some cases, it seems that technologies for learners have not been widely accepted in school instructional programs because they challenge the standards-based perspective on instructional change in schools. As educators, how do we effectively manage and best align the implementation and integration of technologies for learners with institutionally based requirements, while engaging our students and impacting their development through approaches to game-based design and learning? Finding a balance between these considerations seems to hold the key for moving educational technology forward into the future.

By reflecting on the roles that technology plays in the current educational climate, we also need to reflect on past approaches to technology, and to consider how we’ve ultimately arrived where we are. While reading about Alexander’s envisioning of the future of education, I was continually reminded of the work of Seymour Papert, and the ways in which Papert’s ideas and perspectives on educational technology can help move us toward an exciting and engaging future for our students.

Seymour Papert’s influence extends throughout current pedagogical approaches to the integration of educational technology, constructionism, and the teaching of science and mathematics, to name but a few areas of significance. Papert and Solomon’s Twenty Things to Do With a Computer (1971), raises key questions and issues around educational technology that are still current and overwhelmingly relevant, more than 40 years after the report had been written. Papert and Solomon question the reasons as to why schools seemed to be “confined” in their approach to educational technology to uses that limit students to problem solving uses rather than opportunities to produce some form of action. The answer to this, according to Papert and Solomon, is that “there is no better reason than the intellectual timidity of the computers-in-education community, which seems remarkably reluctant to use the computers for any purpose that fails to look very much like something that has been taught in schools for the past centuries.” (1971). The approaches to educational technology proposed within the report are designed for all learners “of whatever age and whatever level of academic performance,” and this introduction to programming connects with our current knowledge of applications to Logo, Scratch, and beyond.

In some way, educators could utilize Papert’s Twenty Things to Do with a Computer as a benchmark of sorts, to assess where our schools and districts currently reside with regards to the implementation of educational technology and approaches to student application. It strikes me as astounding, and somewhat frightening, that a 1971 report on technology could still hold such a crucial level of relevance, especially when we consider how technology itself has changed over those decades. This relevance is a testament to the profound and fundamental importance of Papert’s passion and influence, and his impact continues to challenge and drive progression in pedagogical approaches and planning. By reflecting on the significance of Papert’s legacy, perhaps we can move more productively and purposefully toward the future of education as envisioned by Bryan Alexander.

References

Alexander, B. (2014). Higher education in 2014: Glimpsing the future. Educause Review, 4(5) Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/higher-education-2024-glimpsing-future?

Papert, Seymour and Solomon, Cynthia. (1971). Twenty Things to Do With a Computer. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: A.I. Laboratory.

In my own experiences at several different elementary schools across Calgary, the most significant mobile technology has been the iPad, as the overwhelming majority of our students at the K-4 grade level do not own phones nor bring them to school. We currently have a district wide mobile technology contract that students and parents need to read through and sign before permission can be granted to individual students to bring mobile devices to school. Some of our grade 4 students bring their phones to school, but they turn them off during the school day and only use them at the end of the day to communicate with parents or friends. Truthfully, the schools that I’ve taught at over the years have been very well equipped with iPads and laptops, and the students haven’t demonstrated much interest in using their phones during class time, despite the fact that they would have permission to do so while under teacher supervision. With regular access to iPads and laptops across the school, our students don’t seem to feel the need or see the benefit in using their phones to complete tasks and assignments that could just as easily be completed with our school owned mobile devices.

As far as my own practice is concerned, mobile technology has been an important part of my teaching practice in Physical Education. While I don’t often make use of laptops in the gym, iPads have become a part of our shared experiences in daily physical activity. In particular, even a single iPad in the gym can be implemented in a variety of ways to support student learning and achievement while encouraging collaboration and feedback. Compared to other curriculum areas, Technology and Physical Education are not quite as readily connected with each other, despite the fact that there exists tremendous potential for the use of mobile technology, including iPads, in daily physical education classes. With the demand for focus and funding in other curriculum areas oftentimes being driven from administration or district levels, teachers are often left lacking the knowledge or support to connect technology with Phys Ed. Nevertheless, teachers can integrate mobile technology into daily physical activity to help enhance and support student learning, progress, and achievement.

A single iPad in the gym, especially when connected to a projector, becomes a powerful means of presenting or displaying information to students. This could include demonstrating skills, instruction of new games and activities, sharing of goals and objectives, and communicating information and ideas in ways that get students excited, motivated, and engaged about physical activity. The use of iPads offers opportunities to utilize a wide variety of instructional videos and game demonstrations to provide visual support for student learning. Scoreboards and timers are no longer required tools in physical education sessions, as iPads offer a wide variety of apps for use in keeping score in games or timing student performance. These scores and times can be saved and documented as part of daily formative assessment in Phys Ed.

With an iPad on hand, teachers always have a camera to photograph or video record student activity and document progress. According to Ciampa (2013), students enjoy having their efforts and achievements recognized by others, and in order to make this learning visible, an environment must be created that allows for the engagement of motivation through recognition. Mobile technology, including iPads, provide affordances for this type of collaboration and recognition, and students’ ability to learn and perform motor skills increases with the use of tools such as digital video. By recording students performing a skill or task, teachers have a means of providing meaningful formative assessment directly to students to help guide their learning and development. Through the opportunity to watch themselves performing these skills or tasks, students are able to analyze techniques and self-reflect to guide further progression in Physical Literacy. Collaboration becomes an important component of video analysis, as students are able to watch and critique the work and progress of their peers, while providing constructive feedback to help guide reflection and further skill development. Videos may also be used as a method of summative assessment to document student achievement at the end of a particular unit, or while performing a routine or planned series of skills. Numerous apps are available for use in Video Analysis, with many of these allowing for complex and detailed examinations of skills and techniques, including those utilized by athletes and coaches at high levels of competition.

With the ultimate goal of promoting student motivation and increasing overall participation and engagement, iPads can be used to infuse gamification into daily physical activity. Apps that guide or instruct students in learning skills and movements can enhance teaching and learning in Physical Education, and these can be utilized by individual students, small groups, or during whole class activities. Augmented Reality offers exciting new possibilities in delivering engaging physical activity to students. The use of iPads in physical education can help support and enhance student knowledge, motivation and skill development, while providing teachers with opportunities to engage in varied methods of documenting student progress and achievement in formative and summative assessment. When implementing technology in Physical Education, it becomes essential that lessons follow the guidelines outlined in Bates’ SECTIONS framework (2014) and continue to be based on achieving a maximum level of student activity, rather than focusing on the skill of using the technology. The use of iPads offers students and teachers significant benefits while requiring minimal time to learn and implement during Physical Education lessons.

References

Bates, J. (2014). Teaching in a digital age, Chapter 8. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student                                motivation.Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved                  from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf

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