As educators in the 21st Century, finding ways to integrate technology into our classrooms, teaching practices, and assessment methods is imperative. And lucky enough, eCampus Ontario and Extend are making the process of learn how to integrate technology extremely easy and extremely affordable (a.k.a FREE) for educators. One of the modules found on the website is entitled Technologist and provides the scenario of a teacher teaching the same course in the same way each and every year and they want to learn how to incorporate technology to benefit all learners within their classroom. This module starts with an overview of what is to be learned and then moves into two critical components: defining digital literacy and the design-thinking model.
There are many different definitions of digital literacy, which all encompass the same general theme: digital literacy is one’s ability to find, understand, curate, and create within an online context or platform along with the skills to behave appropriately while online. Before one can even begin to implement technology into their teaching practice, they need to ensure that their students are digitally literate and responsible. Once these basic, fundamental skills have been put into place and practiced, an educator can easily integrate technology into their pedagogy by following the five steps outlined in the design-thinking model.
Design-thinking is a human-centred approach to teaching and learning that believes the people will benefit from the solution or product if they are actively and directly involved in its design. From an educator’s perspective, this particular approach is helpful because it allows the learner to become involved in their own learning and find solutions collaboratively with others. The design-thinking process follows five simple steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and connect. An educator begins by emphasizing with their students and defining a challenge they may be facing. Next, an educator would brainstorm and develop ways to tackle these learning challenges with the use of technology integration. Once an idea has been developed, the educator works with the learners to create a prototype using the desired technology. Lastly, the educator determines how this technological integration can be successfully integrated into their specified curriculum. Attached below is a YouTube video from the Technologist module that outlines what design-thinking is. Take a look!
Coming from a science background, I immediately think about the process of inquiry-based learning and how design-thinking may actually be a connection to this type of learning, simply through the technological lens as opposed to a scientific, laboratory perspective. Imagine what would happen in the world of science education if all science educators incorporated both inquiry-based learning AND design-thinking into majority of their lessons?! Our students would be developing research and construction skills far beyond what they could ever believe was possible and at a much faster rate. I believe that the incorporation of the design-thinking approach could streamline the process of technological integration for some educators having a difficult time doing so on their own. Once they are comfortable in this process, they can begin to look for connections between the design-thinking process and their own curriculums (i.e., inquiry-based learning in the science curriculum) and bring those connections together in a way that is most beneficial to their students.
The multimedia platform that I decided to use to create this infographic was Canva and I absolutely LOVED IT! I was interested to try this platform because I wanted to compare it to Piktochart, the platform I used to create my last multimedia reflection piece. Looking back at the creative process for both multimedia assignments, I found Canva to be easier to navigate and was easier to collect all of the information in one place than Piktochart. When using Piktochart, you have to add panels to increase the amount of space on your infographic, which is more than fine until it comes time to uploading your work onto the blog. Canva has many template options to get you started but allows for complete creativity once a template has been selected. Canva allows the creator to select font types, font sizes, font colours, graphic colours, text placements, text sizes, and graphic sizes. Now understanding how easy and pain free Canva is to use, I am much more comfortable bringing this software into my next placement and incorporating this platform into a future lesson. #TEAMCANVA
Now, lets say you found this article so intriguing that you went to eCampus Ontario yourself to get started on this Technologist module, but there are just so many words and not enough time in your day. HAVE NO FEAR! MY INFOGRAPHIC IS HERE!
