Reports on Future Learners

This week in class we were provided several reports that have important information for anyone who is invested in a child growing up in school today, from parents to district leaders. It is clear that future learners are going to be majorly impacted by technology, and I am eager to see what innovators are able to come up with in the future. Australian social research company McCrindle's Gen Z reports support this, and had some other words/facts that caught me off-guard:

• People falling in the Gen Z generation experience over 10 hours of tech a day
• 1 in 2 will be university educated
• KIPPERS is a lifestage that falls after young adult. What is a KIPPER? (Kids in Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings)
• 78% of Gen Z males, and 62% of Gen Z females will be obese!

I highlight other interesting facts from different reports below.

Project Tomorrow's Speak Up

"Teachers who have experienced online and blended classes for their own professional learning demonstrate advanced uses of technology with their own students, have stronger valuations on the role of technology within learning, and higher aspirations for leveraging technology to support transformed learning environments." - 2017 Digital Learning Report from Blackboard and Speak Up

      This hit home for me as I reflect on my college courses that forced me to use technology. I had a great professor, Dr. Cullen, that taught Geometry by using Geometer's Sketchpad. I learned through discovery by using this dynamic geometry program, and it made me value using technology like this in my classroom. I now use Geogebra and Desmos any time I can to create the same A-ha! moments for my students.


"From our latest findings, 60% of school principals now say that their school has adopted a 1:1 mobile device program for in-school usage, an increase of 9 percentage points in just one year." -
The Educational Equity Imperative:Leveraging Technology to Empower Learning for All

      Clearly it is a great benefit for a student to have access to their own learning device, and I am happy to see that there has been a 9% increase in the past year. I expect this trend to continue.

NMC/CoSN Horizon Report   

If you think about the way most classrooms looked 10 years ago compared to now in terms of the use of technology, it is hard to imagine the possibilities of what educational technology will look like 10-20 years form now. I thought the NMC Horizon Report had some fascinating ideas on what they expect for technology in the classroom. Artifical Intelligence is something that really makes my head spin when I think of all of the different ways it can impact our society, and I hadn't really imagined it in a classroom until I read this report.

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On thing it did point out is AI can't replace the relationships and the emotions tied to human interaction between teachers and students. In the report they stated "...current iterations of AI in education are not yet equipped to supplant teachers' roles in building complex skills including critical thinking, empathy, and creativity." For this reason alone I am confident that the teaching profession is not one that will be threatened by automation. The report did point out some intriguing ways that AI could greatly benefit a classroom. "AI can extend teachers' abilities to foster collaborative learning environments; a report from education company Pearson and University College London describes the possibilities of virtual agents facilitating and moderating students' small-group discussions." Reading this quote, I laugh thinking about teachers complaining about switching from Outlook to Gmail, and can only hope that I am able to keep up with technology throughout my career.

Active Learning: Just Do It!

    

 

Get Active 

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     Anyone that spends a significant amount of time around children will notice the difference in the way kids behave now that technology has consumed our society. Parents give their children smart phones or iPads at younger and younger ages, which often times will act as a baby sitter as the child becomes obsessed with the flashing lights and instant gratification provided by game apps. This has made it difficult for educators to hold on to their old ways of giving lectures while students copy notes on paper. Students need to be actively engaged in their learning process, working on concepts that are meaningful to them and require them to think. The University of Minnesota defines "active learning" as "any approach to instruction in which all students are asked to engage in the learning process," and this phrase has come up constantly in my school when planning future curriculum. Most of our classes are block periods that last 84-minutes, and it has become very apparent that middle schoolers will check out if they have to sit and listen to a teacher talk this entire time.
     Active learning needs to be happening in classrooms if schools want to keep their students passionate about getting an education. Two big projects I've been working on teachers with is building an inquiry mindset in our learners, and implementing math stations. Inquiry Mindset is a book by Trevor MacKenzie where he describes inquiry-based learning. He focuses on making learning experiences meaningful for students, saying "all students deserve a chance to dig into their passions and curiosities." I really like this idea of giving students something to think about, then allowing them to direct the next steps of their learning. To allow for this we are looking into different student-friendly research databases that are full of content and allows for students to investigate a topic of their choosing. In our block-period math classes was are trying out having the students work in stations. Even if you are an extremely engaging teacher, 80-plus minutes is a long time for anyone to sit in one spot learning. Breaking a class up and having students rotate around to different stations makes it much more difficult for a kid to check out of a lesson. Technology makes this a lot easier, as one of the stations could be having students go to Khan Academy or IXL.com, either to review a concept they didn't understand the first time, or if they are ready for a challenge they can work on lessons from the next unit or grade-level. This has been great for students with a growth mindset who always want to push themselves to the next level.
      The active learning example I had to look at for class was called "One Year Told in Six Words", which was a fun project where students from Coonley Elementary School made a slide that contained a six word summary of their year. I made a Padlet below that will help you dive deeper into the project, but it was an example of active learning because kids were able to express themselves with six words and share their creativity on a slide. The project was put out for the school to see and posted on the school's Twitter, which definitely made it more meaningful for the students. As the world continues to find ways to keep children constantly entertained and distracted, it will be very important for teachers to consider how they are going to keep students interested. That starts with active learning.

What type of tech consumer are you?

Resident Vs. Visitor (this post is residential)
This week in Integrating Tech we are discussing what it means for a person to use technology as a "resident" versus a "visitor". David White came up with these terms when trying to think of a way to describe the different ways that people use technology. When someone uses technology as a resident, this means that they are contributing and putting themselves out there to whatever platform of technology they are using. Some examples of this would be posting often on social media, participating in an online message board, or contributing to a blog.  On the other hand, a visitor would use technology either as a tool to consume information or gain services. Visitors would be those who use social media just to read what others are posting, or uses apps to boost productivity.  This idea is not meant to pigeon-hole a person as totally a resident or a visitor. Each way you use a form of technology will fall somewhere on this spectrum between contributor and spectator. You can learn more about the two types of tech users on David White's website.

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Digital Mapping


With his method of describing one's utilization of technology, David White came up with a way for people to analyze their own tech personality by creating a digital map. When creating a map, a person should consider how they use technology the most, and try to place that app/tool/platform somewhere in four quadrants. The horizontal axis of this chart has "residential" on one end, and "visitor" on the other. The other scale has the person consider whether that use of technology is for personal or professional use. Here is an example of my digital map I created on Google Drawing:

Images were found on Google Images

I enjoyed making my personal digital map, and was not surprised to see where most of my tech usage landed. I love using and coaching others how to use technology at my school, and would consider myself a resident in most of my professional tech tools because I'm often contributing my own content to them. Dunkin Donuts has a great app that I earn reward points on almost every day..you could say I run on it. As far as my personal uses of technology, almost all of that would be winding down after work by reading news and sports stories on Twitter. I never really post anything on social media anymore, but I do enjoy going on the sites to learn about upcoming concerts and events going on around me, as well as keeping up with current events. Gmail and Google apps are tools that I use in both my personal and professional life. It's crazy to think how much Google is infused into my daily life, but I really do enjoy their products.

Technology Frameworks: SAMR Model

What is the SAMR model?
This week I'll be diving into the framework for evaluating technology that I have been working with the past four years, the SAMR model. SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition, with each letter basically representing a different level of how a teacher is utilizing technology in their classroom.

In the image below you can see how Dr. Ruben R. Puentedura, the person most associated with the model, defines each level:

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You can find more detailed information from Dr. Puentedura here: SAMR, Learning, and Assessment

Personal experiences with the SAMR model
When I started working at my school in 2014, it was the first year that the building was completely 1:1, with each student having their own Chromebook to take home each night. This was exciting for students and staff, but overwhelming for veteran teachers who had felt success teaching without computers their entire career. The SAMR model was how our administration presented the district's goals for implementation, almost like baby steps. They said after the first year teachers should at least be at the Augmentation level, and by the end of the second year teachers should be showing Modification in their classrooms. Since then our goal continues to be Remodification, which we interpret as sharing out student learning with the outside world. One teacher created a discussion board with another classroom in a neighboring town where they would post student work. My favorite example of this was the Social Studies department connecting their students with a classroom in another country through SeeSaw, which allowed their students to post videos asking and responding to questions about their differences in culture.

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As a teacher I was always trying to find ways to use tech in the "transformation" level. I was able to reach Modification by creating shared formative assessments with my department that we were able to get immediate data from, using Google Drive to collaborate on documents with teachers throughout the school, and provide students with endless guided math practice through Khan Academy and IXL, which almost always resulted in student growth. Some of my lessons that I would consider Redefinition would be using Desmos to have students discover how tables, equations, and graphs were all related in linear relationships. Students would see the graph of a line after typing in a linear equation, and then they'd be able to use the line to find ordered pairs of points on the line. With this tool they were able to see tons of examples in a short amount of time, and you could see the light bulbs going off as they played around with the graphs.

Desmos Graphing Calculator [Image Source]

As a tech coach this year, I am really excited to help out the Social Studies department with making global connections. Through the website twicecapspace.org I was able to find a teacher that wanted to do video conferences between classrooms. I emailed him, we talked through a video chat on Google Hangout, and he was able to give me a network of teachers from around the world that he's been video conferencing with for years! I'm looking forward to learning about all the different ways teachers in my school are redefining their classrooms with technology.