Wednesday 3 April 2013

Technology Showcase



Throughout my time here at Brock I have had a variety of classes, peers and professors. With this came dozens of assignments, tests, papers, midterms and exams. Presentations seemed like a treat the odd time we were given the opportunity. As teacher candidates “to be” in the concurrent program, presentations only made sense to us as it was a natural way of sharing our knowledge; a transferable skill that we could use the practice at.

One of the most valuable presentations that I did was just recently in an Instructional Strategies course. I was assigned the topic of technology in the classroom in a group of three. As soon as collaboration began we quickly realized we had a lot of ideas and information to fit into a 2 hour block. I searched out help from another professor who was not only an advocate and leader of integrating technology into the classroom but also my professor in a course involving it. Zoe added more ideas and topics to cover and helped chunk some together. This still did not fix the issue of so much material so little time. This is when she shared the idea of holding small workshops 10 minutes each in which students could circulate through, play with the technology and direct their own learning while myself and group members simply facilitated the learning.

I love it! For once a presentation style that makes sense; adults sharing information with adults - in a hands on way. Our peers would be responsible for their own learning and use us as resources instead of experts. They would get the chance to dabble with a bit of everything we were sharing and get a feel for some new ideas that they may want to test out in their own classroom.

After a brief introduction we addressed a key issue that we felt was important to recognize right off the bat; safety when dealing with technology being one of them. In my experience I have noticed a huge disconnect in information to both students and teachers about safety with technology. On one side we have the push as young educators to integrate technology into the classroom. We also see this demand from our students growing up in the digital generation to keep them engaged and stimulate them during instruction. Further through our education we have been plugged in and turned on whether it be networking with one another, staying current, gaming, tweeting, searching, storing or sharing information … need I go on. On the other hand, we receive direction from our mentors and administration to unplug and shut down. Using technology outside of school is a recipe for disaster. We need to become opaque hiding our personal lives from our professional lives. It was important for us to share with our peers a middle ground option to all this mixed information. This is an option that will help students to brave technology in the classroom while still maintaining a professional image in their personal lives. We discussed how to use things like twitter and texting services that allow one way communication only. We discussed smart decisions on social networking sites and viewing videos that have been vetted and downloaded to avoid inappropriate ads and pop ups that can railroad a lesson. We stressed the importance of being involved and current with the digital world so that when students encountered issues or concerns we could be a resource to them. In future workshops I would like to add the idea of creative commons and copyrighting issues It will be important for me to share with students the legal issues in terms of using someone else’s property as well as model this in my own work. . I would also like to dive deeper into some of the power within these social networking tools as a professional… not only for networking but for media and real-time news and content to bring into the classroom.

Next we broke students into smaller groups and had them circulate through stations around the room. I was excited to demo LiveScribe Pens and the power of Google through things like docs, drive, blogger, calendar etc. Other topics that were covered were GoAnimate and XtraNormal, Edmodo and Schoology, Gizmos and Online Organizers such as Dropbox, Livebinder and Evernote. During these workshops students either participated in an activity with the technology or simply got to try it and ask questions about it. We discussed ideas as to how it could be incorporated into the classroom and tried to focus the conversation on current trends such as 21st century learning, differentiated instruction and assessment as, for and of learning. We finished the presentation off with a short survey on Google forms about what our peers learned as well as a demo of texting polls for students for some instantaneous feedback.

I really enjoyed this presentation and feel as though I as well as my peers took a lot away from it. I think it is important that teachers and teachers to be realize that technology in the classroom is not simply a PowerPoint or a YouTube video. We must be on our toes and current with the changing trends so that we can be there for our students. Further why not do it in a way that we grow as professionals at the same time? If there is fear of our personal lives becoming to transparent online then make our professional lives more transparent. If our students or better yet administrators want to look us up show them who we are; creative and innovative educators reflecting on the current trends and leading new ones. In today’s world we need to separate the men from the boys and I truly believe that harnessing the power of technology in our professional lives and for the classroom is a step in the right direction.


"It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are."
-Clive James



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