Teaching with Technology - reflecting on my triggering question (Module 4)

You’ve found a great website, full of great material on a topic you love to teach your students. Here’s a great opportunity for you to send your students out onto the internet to do some research, because you know they’re going to love this website as much as you do. I mean, it’s got so much good stuff! You book the computer lab, whip out a lesson plan and a set of instructions, and set them to work. At some point, however, the problems show up. They get done too early and start to explore the other areas of the internet you’d rather they not. In the process of doing that fabulous PowerPoint presentation, they pull images off the web with stock photo embedded across the front. What you thought was great information is insufficient, so they go out and get their own research, which leaves much to be desired. That interactive commenting you expected them to do? They’re copying and pasting memes and calling each other every name in the book. What you thought would be a great lesson devolved into a typical internet experience, and now you never want them to use a computer again.

“Like a village, the K-12 professional community must develop common ground that advocates the use of technology in the classroom while preparing the student to make sound choices both for themselves and for others in the digital world” (Hollandsworth, Dowdy, and Donovan, 2011). Sound choices, indeed, and when my students reach me in the 10th and 11th grades and haven’t been instructed in how to make these choices, it makes my job that much tougher. As with everyone before me, I have a packed curriculum and little time to add units on digital citizenship. Still, what I want my students to do requires them to know and use these skills, and rather than wait on others to do the job, it falls upon me to prepare them for digital tasks. Hence my triggering question for Module 4: How can I develop and implement responsible and appropriate guidelines for my students' online class activities, including research, collaboration, and writing?

Hollandsworth, Dowdy, and Donovan state that the opportunities to be proactive in teaching digital practices include “effective digital citizenship curriculum, peer mentor programs, effective role models, educational faculty/staff awareness, enhanced awareness of the risks, and most importantly - a proactive versus reactive approach” (2011). Within my sphere of influence on that list is being an effective role model and faculty awareness, as well as a proactive approach. As an effective role model, for example, I’m doing more to cite my sources when I put together online presentations. No longer do I take a picture from a Google search and paste it into my PowerPoint; now I look at the usage rights of that picture and make sure I have permission to use it in my presentation. I cite my source, and I have established procedures (or will soon) for my students to do likewise. This course has raised my awareness of these issues, to the point that as I developed a blogging assignment for my students, I researched guidelines for having students make comments so they would be able to do so within set parameters, rather than randomly and according to whatever non-school-appropriate social guidelines they have developed for themselves.

My awareness, however, is not enough. Lindsay and Davis write, “Digital citizenship is … about transforming yourself into a professional who can effectively research technology trends, monitor the uses of technology in your school or district, avoid the fear factor that can easily paralyze you, and empower student-centered learning to create vibrant, exciting learning projects” (2010). In other words, I have to stay on top of things. As new technologies emerge, it’s up to me to understand them and understand how my students interact with them. The guidelines I develop this year may change as the technology my students use changes, and if I cannot adapt to those changes, then my students will fall behind ability to safely manage their new digital frontier.

Lindsay and Davis also point out that “testing the waters of digital citizenship can be turbulent” (2010). I’ve embarked on my student blogging experiment as just that - an experiment. I was upfront with the students about how I wasn’t sure how this would work, but we went ahead with it anyway. I’m learning as we go, adapting to the problems they’re encountering and presenting, and making changes to fill the students’ needs. I’ve already learned, for example, that my students write a lot and that I need to factor in the time necessary to provide feedback. My adaptation there is to have students form groups and provide the feedback within the group themselves. This way they’re responsible for the improvement of their fellow writers, but they also get valuable feedback for their own writing. We’ll see how they do with this part of the assignment, and whether it works or not, I’ll continue to adapt the lesson to make it work better.

The common thread in my research is the need to be proactive. Ribble and Miller write, “Educational leaders have a responsibility as protectors of students, and as such can become part of the problem, if they do not take proactive steps to begin finding solutions to cyberbullying and other technological issues” (2013). Whatever guidelines I develop, I cannot wait until they are needed. I have to develop them now, and I have to be willing to adapt them to the needs of my students. I shouldn’t wait until next year, but I should start implementing them immediately so that I’ll have a head start on what I use for next year. It won’t be easy, but my students will benefit tremendously and be that much more prepared when they leave high school for the real world.

References:

Hollandsworth, R., Dowdy, L., & Donovan, J. (2011). Digital citizenship in K-12: it takes a village. TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, 55:4, 37-47. doi: 10.1007/s11528-011-0510-z

Lindsay, J., & Davis, V. (2010). Navigate the digital rapids. Learning & Leading with Technology, 37:6, 12-15. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ886385

Ribble, M., & Miller, T. N. (2013). Educational leadership in an online world: connecting students to technology responsibly, safely, and ethically. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 17:1, 137-145. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ1011379

Teaching with Technology - Reflecting on my triggering question (Module 3)

In my exploration of ISTE Standard 3 these past two weeks I’ve discovered much about how I use technology and how I can better use technology to help my students. Standard 3 asks teachers to “exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society” (ISTE, 2008). I’ve always been excited about using technology in my classroom, from being one of the first at my school in California to use a document camera, to being one of the first at that school to use Remind101, a text messaging application that later dropped the “101” from their name. The fun of getting to use these tools helped me integrate them into my classroom, even if somewhat awkwardly at times.

One of the biggest challenges I have with technology, however, is matching the desire to use all of the technology with the need to have focus in how I use technology. My triggering question for Module 3 was How can I best share knowledge of educational technologies, such as Google Apps and blogs, with my students? Upon reflection, I want to add “colleagues, administrators, and parents” to the end of that question. My research initially took me to an article titled “Supporting 21st Century Learning Through Google Apps,” by Roger Nevin, a teacher librarian in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Nevin writes about some of the benefits of using Google Apps, including the ability to access information wherever you have internet access and collaboration features (Nevin, 2009). Nevin’s article provides a framework for supporting the use of Google Apps in the classroom, and I realize that the best way to share the information is to implement it in my classroom. Previous research had already sold me on Google Apps, and I’ve started to move in that direction, although I’m a long way from full implementation with my students.

By luck, I discovered another article through reddit, an online collection of links to images and information, often of dubious reputation. While browsing the ELATeachers subreddit I came across a blog post titled “Streamlining the Student-Blogging Process.” Shay writes about how he uses Kidblog to have students post their work, and how he requires them to revise their writing until they have A work before they can post it (Shay, 2016). The timeliness was uncanny as I have already planned to have my students set up blogs this week using Blogger, Google’s blogging tool that we already use for the SPU TLP program. Shay’s blog led me to Kidblog, and the privacy tools available through that program are more in line with what my district will likely require. Namely, the ability to control access to the blogs and to set up individual classes will help me manage students’ online behavior, a potential problem with high schoolers that could derail the entire project if it gets out of control. Shay’s comments helped raise my awareness of issues I hadn’t even thought of. Whether he intended to or not, he was modeling Standard 3 by sharing his knowledge with his colleagues.

The Vialogue for this module also helped tremendously. Before the video was even finished I was already using Diigo, an online resource management tool. This may be the first tool I use to share information with my colleagues, although my colleagues’ familiarity with Google Docs may work out better. Either way, I know I have tools at my disposal, and it’s up to me to start using them.

I’m excited about using all of the tools. And I’m losing my anxiety about it not working. I told my students last week that the blogging would be an experiment. If it works, great; if not, we’ll make it work better next time.

Works cited

ISTE Standards: Teachers. (2008). International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-T_PDF.pdf

Nevin, R. (2009). Supporting 21st century learning through Google apps. Teacher Librarian, 37, no. 2, 35-38. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.spu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=eric&AN=EJ869558&site=ehost-live

Shay, J. (2016, November 4). Streamlining the student-blogging process [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://mr-shay.blogspot.com/2016/11/streamlining-student-blogging-process.html

Wicks, D. (2016). EDTC 6433 Fall 2016 Module 3 hangout recording [Vialogue; video recording]. Retrieved from https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/32833/?ak=e9e0fd1e8991d29280fb95c548c32345