I teach at a school that strongly advocates the use of technology for educational purposes. We are a BYOD school or bring your own device. We also provide laptops to certain students who do not have access to the internet at home. Our school utilizes the website Echo as a means of disseminating and collecting student work. Students and parents alike can access Echo to see how a student is progressing in each class by checking grades and even specific assignments.
This being said, students are expected to demonstrate technological proficiencies on a regular basis. My students are expected to successfully navigate Echo to access their assignments. Google Docs to complete their work as well as Drive to store their various assignments. My students must also learn to navigate the vast internet through appropriate lenses while avoiding distracting material. When I began teaching at my site, I was initially very impressed by the level of ability and comfortability that many students showed towards technology. However, after two years of teaching, I have begun to see the cracks forming. For example, one common issue that many teachers experience at my school, is the consistency with which students take advantage of their technology. Whether it be the issue of using Google chat at inappropriate times or cheating on assignments by sharing Google Docs and simply changing the name on the assignment. Our recent achievements of ever expanding technology can provide our students new and amazing options that has never been seen in the history of education. There are certainly advantages to utilizing technology in the classroom, such as the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with anyone from anywhere and anytime. Unfortunately, many students have not been taught how to make appropriate decisions when faced with so many different digital communication options. So the question becomes, how do we prepare our students to utilize such an immense resource as the internet. We as teachers must educate our students about digital citizenship and what it means to navigate this second world that we have created. Students need guidance in determining the norms of appropriate and responsible behavior with regard to technology use. At the start of each year, I ask each of my students to successfully access a Google Doc that I created which contains several Ice Breaker questions. Students need to create a Google Doc on which they will answer these questions, and then submit that document to Echo, with the proper share settings to provide me editing rights. This is one example of teaching students some of the more technical norms of digital citizenship. In addition to being a BYOD school, we are also a Project Based Learning school. One of my favorite projects to teach is the “Antisocial” project. We spend about a month investigating the effects of social media. Specifically, students investigate the impact that social media has had on people’s social skills when offline. I have students consider how vastly different communication between online users and offline interactions are. Many students ultimately agree that heavy online use can lead to issues such as online bullying or extended isolation. Which prompts my students to have conversations about how to avoid and rectify these issues. Students determine ways to intervene when they see online bullying and recognize the need for offline time. While certain projects lend themselves to teaching digital citizenship, it is certainly something that I need to continue exploring and explicitly instructing, as it will only become more and more applicable to students educational experiences. The key is to not only provide students the tools to successful digital citizenship, but to help them recognize the need and purpose of it.
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Many of today’s students will one day acquire jobs that do not yet exist. In the meantime, these students will need to acquire and master a variety of skills. So how are we to prepare today’s students to excel in our ever changing world?
According to Katie Varatta, Competency-based education may be the answer. Competency Based Learning or CBE is an approach to learning that flips the structure of traditional education. In a typical classroom, “seat-time” is held constant while the quality of learning may vary from student to student. However, with the competency-based approach, students are at the center of their learning. While the specific mechanics of this approach to learning are still very new to me, the gist of it is that students determine their own learning goals, and then work to progress at their own pace until they have reached their goals. Varatta also assures teachers that this approach would not require thirty some odd individualized lessons. Though, I am unsure as to the compatibility of whole class lessons coupled with individualized progression. So how will students know when they have reached their own learning goals? Competency based education has an emphasis on authentic assessment, which evaluates what students know and can do through real-life demonstrations and projects. I do not have precise examples of such assessments, however, as a Project Based Learning instructor, I am well aware of the range of ways in which students can sufficiently demonstrate mastery of their abilities. Competency based Learning appears not only well suited to leverage educational technologies, but also dependent upon them. That is to say, the benefits of Ed Tech equal the need. For one, I can not fathom an efficient mode of tracking the individualized progress of hundreds of students that did not involve modern technologies. I assume minds greater than my own have already created such tools designed to track and store this data while making the learning process more transparent to teachers and students alike. There are many digital platforms that could allow for the intellectual creations of our students to be open to other learners. Students of CBL should have the opportunity to participate in various scholarly communities of discussion which many educational technologies provide. I look forward to learning more about this interesting approach to education and the implications for educational technologies. |
AuthorThe best teachers never cease to be students. Archives
December 2017
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