Wow. Just wow. When I retired from teaching in June 2016, very few if any of us in my district were using technology in any way like teachers do today. We had one Social Studies teacher just getting into flipping his classroom, creating video of his lectures, so that time in class could be spent on working directly with students. Computer class was really computer applications like Microsoft Office. There was no coding, no learning to use tools to animate or create video for projects and very little educational gaming. We had one computer lab in the library open for teachers to sign up, but usage was very limited. A device for every student wasn’t even on our radar! We obviously had not experienced the pandemic yet, so no mass remote teaching and learning yet! We also didn’t have the equipment or bandwidth to do as much with technology as we can today. Our district was a little forward thinking however, having installed Wi-Fi in every building in the district.
There is so much to choose from when deciding which tools to use. I’ve barely scratched the surface, and I’m hardly closer to deciding what video tool(s) to use for my assignments. I’m only closer because I’ve gone to a handful of websites to see their pitch for using their product/tool. The tools that are still on my list all have some sort of free access, with the options to upgrade to one or more levels of paid access. Cost would certainly be a factor, but most (all?) of the tools would require some paid access to be able to teach remotely for a school year or more. Imagine trying to decide a video production tool, a screen casting tool, a math tool, …. I repeat, wow. Just wow.
So how do you decide what to use and when to use it? I’ve been down the rabbit hole and may never come out. I could try tools for hours at a time and still not really know what to use. Recommendations from other teachers would be helpful. School districts may decide for you by purchasing licenses for the district, but how do they decide? When to use the technology brings me to the topic of professional development. The pandemic forced teachers to adopt tools and use them on the fly FOR EVERYTHING! If you’re back to in person learning, how do you know when you should use the technology and when more traditional teaching methods would be better?
And then there’s the digital divide. What about those students that don’t have access to high speed internet or a device on which to work? When I was in the classroom, without surveying my students I knew many whose only internet access at home was through their parent’s mobile phone. How are we going to insure that using technology to teach doesn’t put some students at a disadvantage?
As a former mathematics teacher, I do think that there is a place in the classroom for video, animation and screen casting. For in person learning I used PowerPoint presentations. These could easily be adapted to screen casts to be more effective in remote situations or flipped classrooms. They could also be utilized by students who were absent. Depending on device availability, I could see myself transforming my classroom into more of a self paced mathematics lab, with students working at their own pace – quite often more quickly than we would move as a class. Student projects could be added. Being able to explain a concept, and presenting it to your peers requires some deeper understanding than we usually get from kids in a more traditional classroom.
Wow, just wow.
Eric Minore MALDT 