Author Archives: shamoun

Feb 21 2019
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332thursday10

Technology Use in Classrooms, Here We Come!

Growing up, there was not a lot of technology in the classroom. There was the old-style TV, VHS and DVD player as well as a smartboard that many teachers just used as a white board for their projector to show their notes or videos. As I have graduated from high school and now onto teacher’s college, technology has come a long way. Technology has become a part of the classroom whether it be Kahoot, Mentimeter, PhET, Gizmos and so much more. Technology has become a part of our daily lives and as educators we need to find appropriate ways to use technology in the classroom.

A picture of the Technologist Design Thinking Process

Looking back at the eCampus Technologist module, there are steps that must be taken for technology use that relates to the curriculum. The module first discusses digital literacy which talks about learning to use technology in a safe and responsible manner. It is an ongoing process where the educator and students will learn and develop techniques for them to use, summarize, evaluate, create and communicate information with others by using technology. Coming up with ways to incorporate technology in the classroom involves digital thinking, which is human-centered. It involves designing a product that can solve a problem in the classroom. This includes a 5-step process: (1) empathize, (2) define, (3) ideate, (4) prototype and (5) connect. Each step involves working towards the goal of incorporating technology into the classroom that relates to the curriculum. The first step empathize involves placing yourself in the shoes of your students and figuring out the challenges of the classroom. You need to understand the issues before you can solve them. The second step define involves narrowing down the topics to a specific problem that you can work to solve in the classroom. The third step ideate involves brainstorming ideas that you can use for the technological tools you want to demonstrate in the classroom. Prototype involves creating a demo or rough draft of the product where you will be able to experiment with the tool, share the ideas for feedback and finally refine the idea in order to implement it in the classroom. Finally, the final step is connect which involves making connections between the technology and the curriculum.

As I was first going through the module, I did not understand the relation to how this relates to the classroom. As I read through the steps, I understand how each step is taken to make sure that you are solving the problem of using technology and making sure you relate it to the curriculum. Looking back at the workshop we had in class, a lot of the tools that my classmates showed can be very useful in the classroom. For example, with a Biology and Chemistry teachable, using a website like PhET is very useful to understand concepts that may not be understood by paper and pen. It involves the transformation aspect of the SAMR model especially when it comes to the movement of atoms and visualizing a lot of microscopic aspects of Science labs. It gives the students an ability to learn a concept in a visual manner as compared to just explaining it or attempting to draw it out. They can learn by making certain adjustments and see if that affects the results. This is just one example as how the use of technology can help explain the curriculum.

For this multimedia reflection, I decided to do a Twitter Essay. The very first reflection was a mindmap that was done on paper and pen and the second reflection was on an infographic so I thought ending the reflections with a Twitter Essay would be interesting. I enjoyed using Twitter to create my reflection as it made me summarize my thoughts in 140 characters. I found myself writing a lot more sometimes and having to go back and shrink my thoughts. I loved being able to include GIFS for all my tweets that related to each topic. At the beginning of the semester, was not a big fan of Twitter but after creating an account and using it in the classroom, I feel more comfortable using the platform. Using the link attached on blackboard, I was able to make a thread of all the tweets instead of making individual tweets. I have attached a copy of the thread at the bottom of this reflection. I hope you enjoy going through my tweets as much as I did making them!

Happy reading!

Oct 29 2018
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332thursday10

Let’s Start Digitalizing Classrooms!

My reflection is based on the article Teaching in a Participatory Digital World by Dr. Michele Jacobsen. In the article, they are mentioning that educators who teach using paper and pen should incorporate technology into their classrooms. The students that are now in school are growing up in a digital world and schools should prepare them for this. Students already know how to use technology, but it is the teacher’s job to guide students to use technology in a beneficial way for the 21st century. By incorporating technology, students can analyze information, solve real-world problems and successfully work in a digital world.

It is up to the teachers to provide students with the right tools to learn.  Teachers must constantly engage in professional learning to strengthen their digital competencies. They need to make authentic tasks that allows active learning for the students.  This include coming up with new learning methods and ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. Students and teachers must work together to allow student’s knowledge to grow constantly. When they work together, students can improve their ideas and learn actively instead of having them memorize and learn with paper and pen.

However, this is not something that can happen overnight. There needs to be support from principals, school legislations, and other teachers. They all need to work together for the incorporation of technology to be attainable n the classroom. I decided to make my reflection on supporting one another. Throughout the article, they mentioned that there needs to be support from others to help students use technology. I used Piktochart to make my infographic. I decided to make my infographic from scratch, without using a template. They did not have a lot of templates to choose from and I could not find something that would work with the layout I wanted. The layout that I used included an order of steps. Based on the article, there are steps that need to happen to make sure that educators can teach students about the digital world.  The 1st step must begin with the school legislation. If the school is not provided with internet and there are blocks to certain programs that the teachers want to use, it will be hard to incorporate technology into the classroom. The legislation needs to provide teachers and students with powerful tools to use technology. The 2nd step would come from the principals. They are the ones that need to engage in professional learning to provide support to the teachers. They need to make sure that teachers have the resources to teach technology. The 3rd step is teachers. They are the ones that must to make lessons to help students use the technology. They need to come up with authentic tasks that allow for active learning. Teachers can work together to bounce ideas off of one another and find new ways to make learning interactive. Finally, the 4th step is students. Without the first 3 steps, the students will not be prepared for the digital world. Once there is support from every step, that is when students can use technology and learn from their teachers on how to inquire, problem-solve and learn to work in the 21st century. It involves a community to make sure that students get the correct resources to learn.

Reflecting on this article, I found it important to have almost of a “chain reaction” effect with incorporating technology in the classroom. They are only as strong as the weakest link. While making the Piktochart, I found that using numbers to portray the order in which support needs to come from is important. Teachers can try to incorporate all the technology they like, but without the support and guidance from principals, school jurisdictions, and municipal government, it becomes very hard. Like the article mentioned, if the school places blocks on certain programs, that makes it harder for the teacher to incorporate the use of those technologies.

Before reading this article, I did not really pay attention to the issues. I know that the world is becoming more digitalized every day and that technology should be incorporated into the classroom but looking at how you need to have support will make it difficult. A lot of teachers like to stick to their old-fashioned way of teaching with the overhead projector and chalkboard because they are retiring soon and do not see a point in updating their teaching methods. During my placement, my associate said she has tried to incorporate technology into the classroom but the issue is with the wifi connection. She has done Kahoots in the past but the wifi connection is not strong, or cuts off in the middle of it, making it very frustrating for both the teacher and learners. Even something as simple as having them watch the movie, Osmosis Jones, on YouTube Premium would not work for her. She had purchased the movie for the students to relate to their osmosis unit and had them work on a worksheet during the movie. The wifi stopped working midway through the class so she had to start a new lesson. When she tried again the next day, the wifi still was not working and she had to bring in an older TV and DVD of the movie. This shows that without support, teachers that want to incorporate technology in the class will  find it to be very difficult.

Knowing how there are certain support programs for teachers to come together and learn new techniques about using technology gives me hope for the future. I hope by the time I graduate and have a full time position, that technology can be incorporated into every classroom but not just in a way of SAMR learning, specifically substitution, but in active learning and teaching. I hope that students can make the best out of technology and use it to help them excel in the digital world.

I personally did not enjoy using Piktochart and would prefer to do the Sketchnote like I had done for the first reflection as it was much easier to work with then using technology. With this program, there was always things glitching up, like the font sizes. If I tried to add a word, the font size would become larger and I would have to find the right font size to correct things. There is not a lot of freedom when it comes to changing the pictures that they already have in terms of colour coordination. So, I had to make sure that I found text pictures that were not clashing as well as cartoon like images from google that matched my layout. Once I was able to get past all the glitches and frustration, I found the program easy to navigate. For my next reflection, I will not be using Piktochart. I will try to find something with a bit more freedom in terms of styles and templates. All in all, I feel like through trail and error, I was able to get a result I was happy with.

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Oct 03 2018
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332thursday10 Image

Did somebody say ghosts?!?!

I decided to read the Hybrid pedagogy article, “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom” by Ashley Hinck. The article summarizes how most programs we use have a template where we are accustomed and “trained” in a sense, to drag and drop files and follow a guideline of linear steps. The steps will usually lead to a single correct answer. These programs do not enhance student’s ability to think but instead to follow and become ghosts. Students become like an assembly line. They are all working like assembly workers to get a million different copies of the same exact product. This leads to a lack of creativity that many students face. We become like robots, where we are programmed to know a certain level of ideas but cannot work beyond our capacities, due to the template programs that surround us. We forget how to use our most powerful tool in the body, the brain. Hinck suggests that we should move on to more open-ended platforms that give students the freedom to make their own choices and just use their creativity to think outside of the box. However, this leads to a lot of frustration in students as trial and error may seem like they have failed. We need to teach students that failure is normal, and it takes time. There is more than 1 right answer and we need to learn how to troubleshoot when we run into a problem and not just give up. These platforms give students the freedom to become the creators and makers they were meant to be.

I decided to use a sketchnote for this reflection as I was able to think about how I wanted to display my ideas. Starting off with a blank sheet of paper, I was able to go through a few rough drafts and brainstorm the final picture in my head. This platform gave me the freedom to change things up and choose my own fonts, colours, pictures that certain programs may not allow you to do. Being able to choose what platform I wanted was great as it helps reinforce the fact that students do not all have to choose the same platform to display their ideas.

I love the idea of bringing sketchnotes into a classroom. There is no template or guideline that is necessary to follow. Every students work will be different from one another. I know for myself, starting off with nothing was a bit scary. There was no guideline to fall back onto, or that “I think I am doing this right?” mindset. It took some time to start, but once I started the process of making it was enjoyable. It would be a great thing for teachers to use, to see the creativity that each student has, whereas for the students, it will help them think outside of the box. It isn’t like a typical science or math lesson, where they all have to have the same correct answer. They can all come up with different things and will get the same marks as long as the criteria has been met.

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