#UWinDig

Now I have to be completely honest here, I’ve never been the go-to person to ask about technology. I can work my way around an iPhone but it’s like all hope is lost when I need to integrate tech into my lessons. Well, that is until I got my hands on the Technologist module! eCampus Ontario has provided us educators with the perfect solution to the scary world of technology. Even though we have discussed SAMR plenty of times, I still felt a little worrisome of how I could actually implement it. Now that we have access to the technologist module, I feel a little better about how to go from substitution to redefinition. I also find that the module did a great job of not jumping into the bulk of it right away. It first gave us an overview, and a scenario that essentially asked, “are you stuck in old habits and can’t find a way to integrate technology into your classes?”. It breaks it down for us by saying we are not alone, and in order for educators to implement tech, we need to do it in a way that supports and enriches learning for our students.

The way that eCampus has suggested we tackle this is by incorporating design-thinking. What is design-thinking you ask? It is a way to spark new ideas and help learners find a solution to a challenge in a collaborative and iterative way. The 5 steps involved are: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and connect, and I will gladly go into more depth!

1. Empathize: understanding and determining what our learners actually need. Ask yourself what the challenge is, and if you can solve it through the purposeful use of technology.
2. Define: narrowing in and really identifying the challenge that is at hand. It is important to really make sense of the problem so that educators can start to determine a solution.
3. Ideate: forming and building the characteristics of what form of technology can really help to create a solution for you. It’s also important to address the challenges that your learners have and form the best solution to fulfil the learners’ needs.
4. Prototype: experimenting, diving in and understanding the tool that you have chosen to address learner challenges. Ask yourself, learners and peers what worked and what didn’t work in order to best decide how to refine and move on.
5. Connect: integrating your chosen tech tool into the classroom, connecting it to the curriculum and implementing plans to progress to other areas of technology.

I believe that at times it may be difficult and daunting to understand these steps and actually follow through with it, but I think that it would be very beneficial in an educators’ “bag of tricks”.These steps also help to improve our digital literacy skills as well as our students. As teachers we need to understand our students’ many intelligences and learning styles. We need to meet the needs of each student and by understanding technology we can begin to differentiate and help our students to succeed in all aspects! Please enjoy my infographic as I feel this was the best way to summarize the main ideas of the module. I believe that infographics can tell a story through pictures and words and it easily lays out my thoughts.

As has been a seemingly constant theme within our course, our society has become increasingly dependent upon technological innovations both within our professional and personal lives. Despite this increasing dependence, users of these aforementioned technological platforms seemingly lack in-depth knowledge of the mediums that they loyally use for either personal or professional reasonings. In an attempt to end this apparent oxymoron, Ontario Extend has developed a remarkably detailed explanation designed to explain to all users of technology how to introduce a new medium to people of various ages, creeds, and academic milieus.

Viewed through the lens of an educator, Ontario Extend’s Technologist module has many lessons that teachers can implement in their classrooms in order to promote digital literacy amongst the students that they teach each day. Often when confronted with the notion of digital literacy, a myriad of definitions come to the forefront. Ontario Extend does not attempt to provide one solid definition of digital literacy but instead provides a myriad of exemplars of what one could consider digital literacy for our brave new technological world. By way of example, Ontario Extend offers its visitors the opportunity to engage critically with AdvanceHE’s concept of digital literacy which outlines how “digital literacies are the capabilities required to thrive…in a digital world.” Despite attempting to tackle the varying nature of digital literacy, Ontario Extend does not solely fixate on the notion of digital literacy.

As a means of example, Ontario Extend offers an entire module to its visitors which outlines the ways in which to introduce newly created cutting edge technological forms. Direct evidence of this notion could be found through Ontario Extend’s module, which elaborates upon a seven-pillared theory towards introducing new technology to people who are unfamiliar with the particular technology in question. The aforementioned seven-pillared theory starts with the establishment of one’s own and one’s students’ digital literacies, then thoroughly examines design-thinking, empathising with students, assisting students ideate, prototype, and finally, connect. In my own opinion, integrating each of these seven pillars can greatly improve our students’ understanding of digital technology and thus, enable students to feel both safe and responsible in our increasingly digital world.

Each of the seven pillars presented within Ontario Extend’s Technologist module were successfully able to convey their overall importance to the promotion of strong technological pedagogy. Despite this, Ontario Extend’s module not only provided the necessary theory but also gave educators the steps needed to introduce these pillars into a classroom environment, thus, cementing the overall importance of Ontario Extend’s module to educators across the province of Ontario and, indeed, the rest of Canada.    

The medium that I worked with for this artefact was Twitter which I felt was conducive to presenting the main ideas presented within Ontario Extend’s module. Additionally, through Twitter, visual representations can encapsulate the content of an individual tweet which provides a twenty-first-century adaption to the saying that a picture tells a thousand words. As a platform, I found Twitter fairly easy to use once a user has gone through a period of experimentation and play! Going forward, instead of having students write longer pieces of prose, I will examine the possibility of having students compile a series of mock tweets to present their ideas on course material that we have engaged critically with.

The modern educator has a wide array of resources available that can enhance their teaching and maximize student learning. Within the last decade or so, there have been many developments by the way of tech and digital resources that can help educators teach to the individual learning needs of each of their students. Although it is helpful to have so many resources to choose from, it can be overwhelming to choose appropriate resources that actually enhance the lesson.

A wise man once said “with great power comes great responsibility”: this phrase stays true with modern access to resources. Educators far too often include tech and digital resources that are either ineffective or do not enhance their lessons as a result of the overwhelming selection they are exposed to. These resources are sometimes selected in order to add a tech element to their lesson, but have no real substance or add any value. Educators must be picky – choosy with the resources they use, ensuring that they actually add something positive to their lesson.

eCampusOntario understands the struggles that many educators face when trying to incorporate effective and valuable digital resources within their lessons. In an effort to mitigate these struggles, they have developed a module called ‘Extend’ that looks to help individuals select appropriate resources and utilize them to the maximum potential. There are different modules that approach the issue from multiple angles, however, I will be focusing on the potential of the module from the point of view of an educator. 

Extend emphasizes the importance of developing and maintaining digital literacy in order to safely use digital resources. Developing an understanding of the ulterior motives behind some of the resources available to us such as information sharing and target marketing can help educators select resources that are safe for their students to use. When selecting digital resources for your classroom, it must be understood that you are ultimately responsible for the ‘cyber safety’ of your students. You must be absolutely sure of what is happening with your students’ information.

 One of the points that extend outlines within its module is the idea of using digital resources in order to ‘spark’ new lesson ideas and using student feedback in order to improve these lessons. This is a framework called ‘Design-thinking-approach’: using digital resources in an effort to create innovative and engaging lessons. Student feedback will provide the educator with the necessary information they need in order to tailor the lesson to student needs and desires.

Extend also urges educators to ’empathize’ with their students in order to appropriately select resources for their lessons. Resources should be used in order to engage students and address their individual learning needs. It is common for educators to select resources based on their own personal learning preferences rather than selecting them with their students’ learning preferences in mind.

Extend provides effective and useful strategies to maximize the potential of the digital resources being used. They suggest that the teacher creates a mind map that outlines the uses of the resource, the needs of the students, as well and how the resource will be utilized. Although I am not personally the mind map type of person and will without a doubt never actually use one, I can see this being useful to someone who is a visual learner.

It is integral to first understand what the needs and challenges that are faced by your students first in order to appropriately select effective resources. Using this understanding of the struggles that are present in a classroom, an educator may select resources that look to address these struggles and effectively mitigate them.

One of the key parts of the process of sourcing, exploring and utilizing effective digital resources is prototyping, sharing and getting feedback on what you have done. Using the knowledge and experience of the teachers in your network will help you to ensure that you are utilizing sources to their maximum potential, and not just including digital resources in your lessons for the sake of incorporating tech. The changes you make to your lesson based on the feedback you receive is the final step in the process of exploring, analyzing and selecting a digital resource that will enhance your lesson.

Although I do think that extend can be useful for some people who are trying to navigate through the congested world of digital resources, I do not find it to be particularly useful for my own individual needs. I look forward to seeing how my fellow classmates feel about the module, as well as how they have chosen to summarize its uses.

Have a look at EcampusOntario’s ‘Extend’ here and begin the process of selecting effective and appropriate digital resources.

Choosing how to incorporate technology into your classroom can often feel like an overwhelming task. Sometimes we add technology just for the sake of having technology. Sometimes we find a cool application on our favourite teacher-blog and jump right in, adding it to our already overwhelming amount of technology, making it serve no real purpose. Sometimes we sit down at the computer intent on finding the perfect tool for the perfect lesson plan only to find ourselves WAY down the internet rabbit hole three hours later with no real progress to show for it!

The Technologist Module on Ontario Extend provides a helpful framework in choosing technology that really works for you and your students. Using the design framework, this module leads the user through a process of defining the problem they are addressing, and then finding a real solution.

I decided to use really enter into the process to see for myself how it would work. I chose a problem I experienced in my own teaching experience and set about to find the perfect solution. In many ways, the process was helpful. Thinking about my own students and trying to place myself in their shoes really did help me to focus in on what the actually challenge was for them. In the end, however, I do believe I already had a solution in mind and the module did very little to expand on that solution. In retrospect, this type of activity would be better suited in a small group, where the brainstorming phase really generates as many ideas as possible. When completing it on your own, you are more likely to stick within the realm you already have established for yourself as a teacher. You will then evaluate the ideas within that realm as well and then settle into your regular routine. The design process is a helpful application to the designing lesson for teachers, however, usually the design process involves a group of people designing something to solve the problem. It would be great to see teachers get together in this way to solve common problems that they have.

Below you will see my Piktochart, which shows my journey through the module.
I also choose to explore two other ed tech tools: Seesaw and Doceri.

*Click on various sections for view in-depth content and videos*

Extend’s Technologist module allows educators to work through a design process to purposefully integrate technology in the classroom. As I read through the process, I could hear “SAMR!” being screamed in the back of my mind.  By following the design process outlined in the Technologist module and consistently returning to the “Define” step throughout the process to, educators are on the path to successfully redefine their classroom with the use of purposeful technology. Although this module proposes design thinking for this particular situation, I believe that it is useful in every problem-solving situation. In fact, in an IB MYP school, “Design” is a subject taught to all students and places significant emphasis on the design process to create purposeful solutions to real-life problems. Working through this module, I am thrilled to see that this thought process is being encouraged for all educators (who will hopefully then share the thinking process with their students).

While the term “technologist” might feel a bit extreme to educators who are only starting to become comfortable using technology in their classrooms, this module truly walks them through the steps to developing digital literacy. There is often a misconception that being digitally literate means that you are competent with all technology. However, I propose that it’s more about knowing how to find the information to use technology in meaningful ways. It’s about being resourceful and willing to try and problem-solve when something doesn’t work. Most importantly, technology in the classroom requires a growth mindset. There will be problems. Challenges with tech are inevitable. However, if teachers and students have the will, they will find a way to make meaningful solutions work.

In creating this multimedia artifact, I knew that the Technologist module would be challenging enough to summarize and incorporate my own ideas. So I chose to use a medium I was more comfortable with. I used Canva to create this piece because it afforded me the opportunity to construct without a template. In past assignments, Canva has received criticism for limiting creativity due to restrictive templates. However, most people don’t realize that you can use it without a template to create your own design without limitation. With a little creativity (and digital literacy *wink wink*) even free online software that is known for templates can allow for unique and individualized creations!

Where can we as teachers go to help answer the question: “How do I integrate technology into my lessons to address specific student learning challenges?” The answer: Extend Ontario’s Ecampus Technologist module.

The goal of this course is to integrate technology into our classrooms. For example, instead of us simply reading the objectives of the technologist module, a more engaging cartoon “scenario” was provided to explain the learning expectations.  This is in contrast to the typical bullet point list of learning objectives that we are all used to seeing.

Let’s jump right in. Regarding my personal opinion on the definition of digital literacy, I found that British Columbia’s explanation is most in line with education theory; it states:

“the interest, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use digital technology and communication tools to access, manage, integrate, analyze and evaluate information, construct new knowledge, create and communicate with others”.

I connected with B.C.’s definition because, each of their listed uses of digital technology are important features of most Canadian educational curriculum documents and therefore, by design, they have a deeper foundation in the teaching profession. Whereas, the other three definitions for digital literacy, they emanated a sense of more “general applicability”, so that the definition could align with any profession.

The design thinking concept is trying to establish answers to a) how to get students in the habit of identifying the real root of a problem, then b) crafting creative technological solutions to those problems. The design thinking process uses a systemic approach that has a core focus on both group learning and growth.

This learning module provides a five step “Design Thinking” process.  These five steps are designed to properly identify problems and then create good technological solutions for them. The following is a brief summary of these five steps.

1. Empathize: This step is a critical brain storming activity that invites designers to imagine themselves as the user with a goal of creating a list of problem-components. This step is best completed in groups and is geared towards identifying all of the components that exist within the context of the problem.  The scenario we’re given in this module is to empathize with teachers and how we can best help them integrate tech in their lessons to facilitate individual learning challenges.
2. Define the problem: Identify the actual root of the problem. This is typically done by examining our list of problem-components for a pattern so as to define the core issue of the problem or challenge at hand.  For me as a teacher, I suspect that the definition of the pattern that I would garner from my own individual issues would be how to step out of my comfort zone to try various technologies that could be helpful in a lesson.
3. Ideate – generate a list of potential existing tech that might fit our problem and then test each of them for feasibility to meet the majority of our problems. Alternatively, we can create our own tech that meets all of our needs, such as a module-driven website like EXTEND. The module suggests using the “SECTIONS” model for feasibility analysis to ensure that the chosen technology is learner-focused.  In our scenario, our chosen technology would likely be the one that best delivers the lesson objectives, given our specific evaluation criteria.
4. Prototype – Incorporate our problem components into the chosen technology, conduct testing, share this design with colleagues for constructive criticism, incorporate feedback from each of these tests, and then refine the program to create a “final product” for student learning.
5. Connect – Evaluate the challenge of integrating this technological integration in our actual lessons by “connecting” the technology to the curriculum. This is the final process of determining how best to instruct the students in how they can incorporate the technology to maximize their own learning.  It’s important here to create a succinct sequence of student instructions that can link all of the learning objectives to ensure a successful technological integration.

In summary, this five step Design-Thinking approach, which is intended to work within our own personal digital literacy mindset, is a process that can help teachers navigate the world of technological options that exists for educators.  The ultimate goal of this module is to assist teachers with the exceptionally challenging issue of: how do we facilitate individual student learning, with an aim of building their problem solving abilities, whilst using the vast universe of technologies that are available in an ever growing and evolving digital world.

-Drew Tymec