We have come to the end of CEP 810, Teaching Understanding with Technology. Along the way I have learned or reviewed a number of things:
- how to set up an RSS feed
- how to edit in iMovie
- how to swim like a really slow Michael Phelps
- how Creative Commons licensing works
- how to be an insufferable Evernote user who takes photos of everything exclaiming, “It’s fully searchable!”
- how to cut a PB&J sandwich with a giant burger flipper
- what my Professional Learning Network is and how to use it
But more important than the concrete skills I learned, were the concepts that were opened to me in my first MAET course. As I reflect on these, I see implications all around me.
Learning, mastery, and experts
To start there was our study of how experts learn, which I related to as a musician who had to learn a lot in a short period of time, and how we can best teach for understanding. Going forward, I will continue to refer back to what we learned about mastery and how experts learn to design and implement the best possible practices.
Navigating This Vast, Potentially Flat Earth
Next, we explored the pros, cons, and current deficiencies in the application of technology in education. We explored how 21st-century technology with its never ending library of unedited, uncurated content, demands a high degree of discernment from the user. In the past, education primarily depended on the learner’s ability to provide the right answer to a given question by drawing on predetermined sources. 21st-century learning, demands that the learner find the right information from a limitless pool and apply it to the right questions. Every day, we see the benefits, as well as the perils of this new model of obtaining information. Here I am tempted to open a discussion about the rise of certain political movements and the incident in Charlottesville, but I will instead point to another strange idea that has gained a lot of traction in recent years: the flat earth theory.
There is nothing new about the view that the earth is flat, but in recent years it seems that there has been an upswing in activity on the flat earth scene. Why is this? The fact is that the internet provides a network for people with a minuscule minority view to connect and share information. The result: today the Flat Earth Society’s twitter page has over 13,000 followers and videos debating whether or not the earth is flat rack up millions of views on Youtube. As a teacher, I need to be aware of the challenges this new media landscape provides and find ways to help teach students learn to navigate it.
Being a Subversive at Home Depot
We ended our exploration of Teaching Understanding with Technology by learning about Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK). Central to Dr. Mishra’s presentation of TPACK was the idea that effective educational technology is not always specifically designed for education. But when teachers with a depth of content knowledge and a working understanding of best pedagogical practice are able to apply a technological tool in a way that empowers students technology can be truly transformative.
At the same time that we were learning about subversive uses of technology in education, I was working on a project with my sons. We were building a backyard fort out of random materials and were looking for something to stabilize the frame. We had 50-pound sandbags, but the boys could not lift them. Looking for an alternative solution, we went to Home Depot. I asked the employee if they had fillable sandbags, she said “no”. I explained that we were trying to get some sort of containers that we could fill with sand to use as weights for a fort. She replied flatly, “we don’t have anything like that.” I thought, Really?! This is Home Depot. It is a place that literally sells anything you need to do millions of different projects. We perused the aisles and found some very sturdy, closable Tupperwares, that were fully stackable and thankfully inexpensive. Now the boys have modular sand bricks that they can carry.
In the coming year, I will strive to continue finding innovative ways to adapt technology to my teaching needs.
Now What?
This class has been a wonderful introduction to the world of learning with technology. Going forward I hope to continue exploring the following questions:
- Given the breadth of research tools now available to students, how do we evaluate and teach literacy in the 21st century?
- Given that so much learning now takes place online with the learner choosing the time and location of their work, how do we create courses that allow students to still feel like they are part of a cohort?
- How do we take advantage of the scalability of online learning while still retaining the responsive differentiation and individualization we now know to be essential to deep and meaningful learning?
I look forward to exploring these ideas over the coming years.