Where I am… “Acquaintances, not yet friends”
Evaluating where a professional stands with technology can be a key factor in determining their ability to adapt to any workplace environment, thoroughly complete assignments or tasks, and collaborate efficiently with others. It is important for an educator to be reflective in their teaching practices to better their classroom learning. Since I personally tend to use technology to engage, enhance, and extend lessons I choose to reflect using the Triple E evaluation rubric. I also think it is a rubric that is more age-appropriate for the students I am teaching, other frameworks aren’t as applicable.
There are a variety of ways I engage students to want to learn, discover, and connect to the learning goal or objective. Sometimes this is through videos, past examples from prior students' work, inquiry-based approaches, cooperative groups, etc.
Of the categories within the rubric, I can see the value of technology, however, I struggle to keep a few students focused on the task at hand behind their Chromebooks. I sometimes catch students with several tabs opened that aren’t necessarily valuable to the content we are working on. I do believe the multi-tasking and scroll era has impacted the attention spans of children and adults especially while working online. I do fall short in having students collaborate within a platform because it hasn’t yet been applicable. Edutopia had a great article offering suggestions.
Supporting Student Engagement with Technology
I have used technology to enhance curricular lessons, and I love incorporating Mystery Science to support what we are learning. There are plenty of websites that offer support and extensions of content such as Khan Academy, National Geographic, Brain Pop, Freckle, Raz Kids, Flocabulary, and the list goes on.
The groundwork for incorporating any technology is fostering digital citizenship and digital literacy which is a crucial foundation in students being able to responsibly use technology. Students need to tap into their critical thinking skills when exploring online, even when it is guided by a teacher.
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I think in reflecting on my own practices, I feel the need to foster digital learning while meeting rigorous standards. This has added a layer to my teaching within the last few years, I think the pandemic has certainly increased the speed at which technology needs to be integrated into learning, however, I have encouraged students to show what they know using some 21st-century approved platforms:
Where I want to be…
We are often told we are “building a plane while flying it,” and “preparing students for jobs that do not exist yet” are two ways to define the role of an educator today. The reason I stick to more of a Triple-E approach is because I feel with technology moving at such a rapid pace and students spending so much time on their devices outside of school it caters to their learning while still having a traditional approach.
As an educator I want to utilize technology to the fullest extent to develop engaging lessons, foster inquiry, and most of all prepare students with the skills needed to adapt in the future.
In reflecting on the rubric, I can give more explicit directions and tell students what is okay and what is not okay while working on the Chromebooks. Setting clearer expectations and really zoning in on the task or activity can help some of the drifters in my classroom keep focused.
As much as I want to incorporate technology, I do feel guilt if students are on their devices too much even when purposeful. The weekly Friday afternoon announcement always says “Stay off those devices!”, yet we provide them for the students. As a parent, I try not to let my children spend their time in sedentary behavior mode. As an educator/parent I want to provide a good balance of technology, but keep students and my own children safe from the many dangers on the internet. It is important to me to teach, guide, and have thoughtful explicit lessons with the age group I am currently working with.
Balance is absolutely key when it comes to technology. That's why the Triple E framework is so important. It allows us to truly think about if the technology we are using impacts the learning goal. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!
ReplyDeleteThis module is the first time I saw the Triple E Framework and I love its focus on the connection between the tool and learning goals. This is a framework I need to spend more time and reflection with. At the high school level, I remember during the first weeks of Covid lockdown we were instructed not to give too much work because we did not want the students to be on their devices all day. However, now some days students may be on their device almost all day (8:00 - 3:00) if the classes and lessons just so happen to line up that way. The message about too much screen time no longer seems to be exist.
ReplyDeleteHi Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your take on the Triple E Framework and your objective evaluation of how you’ve integrated technology into your classroom. Being an educator is one of the hardest jobs in my opinion, and I have a huge respect for those that choose to educate the next generation *Pause for standing ovation*. With the unavoidable responsibility of integrating technology into education, the job of teaching has become more challenging. Reading about your experience with teaching students using Chromebooks, I thought to myself “Wow, that has got to be a difficult situation to navigate.” Throughout history, there’s always been at least one student who rebels and doesn’t pay attention. But now in the 21st century, it’s more challenging to wrangle those rebels when students must be given a distracting tool to complete work. This is an incredibly difficult thing to balance. I agree that setting clear expectations will be very helpful. Although, I wonder if there’s a way to prevent students from going to certain websites, or only giving them access to certain websites. This way teachers don’t have to constantly monitor students. Or maybe, a system could be created so that teachers can view the activity of each Chromebook from the comfort of their desks to ensure students are staying on task.
Great Post!
~Alisha
I agree with you that technology is very important as we work in the 21st century. Every profession these days have some form of technology from Truck Drivers and their GPS, computer logging systems , to educators and our various forms of technology we use to provide explicit lessons. I know my husband who would stays away from social media and other forms of technology had to quickly adapt so he could move up into management where he works. I also agree with you the importance of being reflective especially in education.
ReplyDeleteIts such a fluid proffession and is constantly changing and growing especially in the field of technology. Evaluating where a professional stands with technology can be a key factor in determining their ability to adapt to any workplace environment, thoroughly complete assignments or tasks, and collaborate efficiently with others. It is important for an educator to be reflective in their teaching practices to better their classroom learning.