Author Archives: rocheleb

Feb 20 2019
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About to Change Future Generations


Every student we encounter as educators will have a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses when it comes to digital literacy. Digital literacy is the ability to use communication and information technologies to find, evaluate, create and communicate information. As we assess our teaching strategies, it’s extremely important to promote open education that includes Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as mentioned in the Technologist Module. We need to focus on integrating technological tools that can be used in a variety of ways to accommodate each student’s needs. Student-centred learning should be the basis of how we choose to teach the curriculum to attempt to reduce the barriers in our student’s education and address their strengths in the process. If we can create flexible learning environments we will be able to accommodate all individual learning differences. Where do we begin? Design thinking empowers people to develop new solutions to current problems. We need to analyze each student with empathy and begin to learn what these students need. What challenges are they experiencing that can be resolved with the use of technology? After we define the learner’s challenges, we must start identifying features of how technology can address these challenges and which technological tool could best be used to accommodate these issues. It’s important to consider the following questions while choosing a tool; how easy is it to use? Is it costly/ timely? Is there security/privacy settings? Etc. This is when differentiation instruction must be incorporated. This is when we address the needs of our learners and specifically address the concerns of each student.  When a technological tool has been chosen, it needs to be experimented with our students. This will allow the students to see what works, what doesn’t and what improvements should be made. With the feedback of the students we are able to redefine the prototype that they experimented with. It’s important to explain how this tool connects to the learning outcomes of the curriculum.

I believe design thinking is very important to incorporate into our teaching practises. Most of us have all experienced the same teaching approaches; copying information from a power point, memorizing many week’s worth of material, then regurgitating it on paper and that’s how our intelligence is defined. We are not addressing the strengths of our students and giving them a fair opportunity to develop to their full potential.  Our assignment of promoting an educational tool we were unfamiliar with, was an eye opener that followed the modified learning explained in this module. The assignment enlightened us of how we could use these new tools in the classroom to promote differentiated instruction. For example, Padlet can be used to help those who don’t necessarily enjoy speaking in front of a crowd, or those that are limited in expressing creativity. It’s so important that we address ALL intelligences and create a flexible learning environment for every student we teach.

Oct 30 2018
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332wednesday12

BOMBARDED BY BOUNDARIES

 

Chris Gilliard and Hugh Culik’s article, “Digital Redlining, Access and Privacy” brought forward issues we as postsecondary students experience on a daily basis but don’t recognize as problems. Digital redlining is when institutions and policy makers enforce boundaries and/or use technology policies, practises and teachings to discriminate against specific groups (Culik & Gilliard, 2016). If you are unfamiliar with digital redlining, a prominent example outside of a classroom setting could be Facebook. When you sign up for Facebook you don’t identify your ethnicity, however advertisers can target certain populations based on your previous likes, shares and groups joined. They can also choose who they want to exclude from seeing their advertisements. This is invisible redlining because  we as consumers are unable to see this happening. Doesn’t it spike your curiosity to how much information is circulating the world that you have no knowledge about?

 

Digital Redlining affects the way we learn as students and teach as educators. Students are limited to the amount of information we can learn about and community colleges and lower income institutions suffer these consequences to a greater extent. These schools are unable to access information that is available to higher educated schools and programs. Imagine attending a school that had restrictions on majority of the websites you were trying to research information on? I can relate to this in the sense when researching journal articles to provide support to arguments for a research paper and being unable to access them because I have to pay for it. It’s extremely frustrating and discouraging to have a limited amount of information to use for a topic. Another issue is feeling less qualified while applying for a job because you weren’t exposed to/ blocked from the same resources and educational tools your competitor was allowed to access. Redlining poses many restrictions to our learning as students.

 

How are we as future educators supposed to promote creativity and exploration in undiscovered topics if the information surrounding these topics aren’t readily available to us? We are setting students up to fail if we expect them to gather enough information to build on topics that are restricted to the public. We are also unable to know what policies will shape what our students will see and not see which is where the problem begins. Policy makers need to ask themselves who and why their target population is and whether these filters, available access, and policies are restricting a student’s learning or promoting the openness students require to achieve their goals. I personally believe after reading this article, the only students that set up to succeed are the ones privileged enough to attend higher education institutions, so how do we change this? This is the pending issue that needs to be made aware of and addressed. I react to this issue the way I do because it directly affects me as a students and a future educator. With my knowledge about this topic now as I teach, I will be aware and take into considerations the issues redlining causes. I hope you enjoy my twitter essay addressing many of the concerns and issues associated with digital redlining.

 

 

Brittany Rocheleau

Oct 01 2018
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Where Does a Ghost go on Vacation? The Modern Classroom

Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom- Ashley Hinck

Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, etc. were the apps I immediately thought of when I heard the term “digital media” until I read Ashley Hinck’s article “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom.” Ashley describes these templates and many others as short cuts that fail to facilitate our learning as young students. We aren’t set up to be creators or explorers of our own learning pertaining to the digital world because as students we are only exposed to these types of “drag-and-drop” shortcuts. The programs “Raspberry Pi” and “HTML coding” were completely foreign to me, it’s not that as students we are lazy and choose not to explore these programs but because our previous educators have always had the same style of teaching- multiple choice tests, step-by-step instructions, right or wrong answers- completely limiting our imagination and creativity. I am guilty of sticking to what I am familiar with especially when it comes to technology, which was evident when I chose to not use any of the computer programs, and instead, stuck to paper and coloured pencils to carry out this assignment. I am also guilty of feeling the frustration when I can’t figure out the correct answer or when there isn’t a specific way to figure out the correct answer because it’s a rare occurrence that I find myself in situations where this actually happens.

As future educators we need to encourage students to explore situations that make them uncomfortable. We need to teach the importance of trial and error through unstructured assignments and other ways to test their knowledge. It’s insulting to student’s intelligence to provide them with step-by-step instructions like reading skills is what they’re getting tested on. Digital making is unlike any other subject areas in the aspect of exploring endless possibilities and not always having a certain way to perform tasks. I believe the overall and underlying problem in students limited intellectual abilities stems from how the school’s shape our thinking. After reading this article, I intend to alter my teaching philosophy to create an environment for students that promotes open-endedness, discomfort in less familiar areas, and facilitate learning through exploration and creativity.