Exploring the Impact of Technological Change

Hey everyone,

For today’s post, I’m going to look at the impact of technological changes on society and how that can affect classrooms.

Last week, I felt really confused about all of the different programs and websites we were expected to use in this course. I kind of looked like the girl in the above photo, surrounded by the latest technology but unsure of which one to use or how to use it effectively. Lately we’re living in a world where the latest technology only lasts two years before the something else brand new will replace it. Every time we just keep adjusting and upgrading or worse resist it and fall behind.

It kind of reminds of that Doctor Who episode “Rise of the Cybermen” in series 2 where everybody has these “earpods” that instantly download new information and everybody keeps “upgrading” their minds to accommodate new information and data. Eventually they end up looking like these guys – the cybermen.

Anyway, in this week module, we were asked read, Postman’s, “Five Things we need to Know about Technological Change”. I’ve summarised the main points below, the original document can be found here.

1. We always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price.

 This kind of reminded me of that quote from Spiderman, “Great Power comes Great Responsibility!” As teachers we will be the implementer’s of any new technology the government or our schools decide to use and we need to be constantly evaluating the effectiveness of the ICT we are using and why we are using it. Will the pain and effort it takes to use pay off in the end, or will it create more problems? Will it achieve something in the long run? (This can be hard to predict in the current technology climate because they will always invent something better before you’ve figured out the first one :p )

2. There are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try

to persuade the losers that they are really winners.

This one basically said to me that as teachers we need to be careful about who is really benefiting from technology we use in the classroom. Once again this links back to previous posts and my personal opinion is that if its not benefiting the students learning then its not worth it. Additionally there will be times when some students will benefit from one form of ICT and other students will work better with a different one. This is something we need to be aware of and ensure that we are using a diversity of ICTs in the classroom so all students have an opportunity to benefit.

3. That there is embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice.

Sometimes that bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not.

A perfect example of this is the laptop roll out under the Gillard Government. Ultimately I think it benefited education in the short term but now without the funding to continue, schools have to accommodate without it. Also as teachers we will be asked to incorporate ICTs that we don’t agree will suit the needs of our students or the reasons for its implementation and we will have to find ways to work around that. Make the ICT work for you and your students. (if possible)

4. Technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything

This one is quite scary. To some extent technology has already changed education in that most students now have access to a laptop or an ipad at home and school. However there are definitely more changes to go! I wouldn’t be surprised if one day, students are creating apps as part of their assignment rather than oral presentations and assignment success was determined by how many times people downloaded a student created app or how many views a youtube video received.  (Fingers crossed, it doesn’t become that bad!)

5. Technology tends to become mythic; that is, perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore

tends to control more of our lives than is good for us. 

This is the most disturbing point of all. I can still remember playing my game boy as a kid and my sister playing Nintendogs on the Nintendo DS. Nowadays those devices don’t exist and its nearly impossible to purchase games even second hand.

Even Facebook has basically become the worlds population data base with a majority of people with access to a computer having an account. You can now use Facebook to log in to websites instead of using your email address and send messages and have phone calls. A lot of schools these days have whiteboards or an interactive whiteboard instead of black boards. What other technologies are going to become obsolete and remain a faded memory in the past?

Now for all of the doom and gloom, there is some hope. That hope is us.

We are third year university students, pre-service educators and in a few years we are going to be teaching in schools. This course gives us the opportunity to explore new forms of technology, build up our PKM and reflect on effective and practices to use ICT in the classroom.

We have the power to create positive change in schools and decide to what extent technology will change education and where its going to take us into the future …

Tech kids saving the world!

Following from my previous blogs “Race Against Time” and “Building Apps: A new classroom project”, I’d like to explore some more ideas and try to share some insight on how ICT’s can be used in education as a catalyst to change the world.

I’ve been doing this course for almost 2 weeks now and I’ve already decided a few things.

1. I will use ICT’s in my classroom with the students. There is no if’s or but’s, its a definite. Right now, I’m looking for new ways to make this happen that engage my students.

2. The way I use ICTs will always have student learning at the heart of what I’m doing. In a previous blog I questioned whether teachers use ICTs mainly to save time. I still hold this viewpoint and as a teacher  I will probably also be guilty of being caught up in the race against time. However student learning will always come first for me. If its not benefiting the students, there is no point.

3. I want students to see ICTs as a tool, a tool that they can use to create change in their world. The change which they want to create, could be just about anything. From creating a new game that people all over the world will play and enjoy, presenting information about a topic that they love to an audience beyond the classroom, creating a videos that critically analyse a controversial topic and encourage viewers to question their perspective. The opportunities are endless.

Perhaps, I’m being a bit of an idealist. I mean I have to sound a little crazy saying that kids can change the world at school (of all places) just from using technology. But its possible.

In fact, kids are already using technology to make huge changes to their world right now! (And I still can’t work out how to install the printer on my lap top!)

For example:

Kid President – changing the world and making people laugh one video at a time.

Malala Yousfazi – a young Muslim teen who started a blog under a false name, promoting education for girls in Pakistan.

Thomas Suarez – a 12 year old App Developer

(I’m sure there are many more out there, feel free to comment if you know of any others! )

Imagine the possibilities students could open up if we gave them the tools and freedom required to accomplish anything!

Building Apps: A future class project!

Hey everyone,

Today I was working on my assignment and decided to take a break by watching TED talks about education and technology to gain some insight and new ideas into where people think technology is going take us in future.

When talking with peers and thinking about the current capabilities of technology, I’ve always wondered what education will look like in the near future? And what uses for ICT can teachers find that will enable students to grow, develop opinions and make changes in their world?

As I was thinking about these questions, I remembered an image I’d seen on the Literacies Education Facebook page, started by some university lecturers including USQ lecturer Stew Riddle. (See image below)

To some extent, I agree that technology is a tool not a learning outcome and it’s message resonates strongly with this course. However, I still strongly believe that there is a place for blogs, prezi’s and wordles in the classroom.

As a teacher, I want to inspire my students to engage in their community, develop opinions and advocate for change however, I also want my students to use technology as a tool to achieve this.

Below I’ve also attached a TED talk by Thomas Suarez who is a 12 year old app developer.

From watching this video, I began to think, what if we could teach our students how to build apps?

What kind of apps could we create in the classroom and what would be the purpose?

What would teachers want students to build apps for? To inspire change? How could we do that?

Please feel free to post any ideas below!

A Race Against Time…

In exploring the use of ICTS in the classroom in my last post, I began to ponder over these questions:

Are we using ICTs in a genuine, meaningful creative way to inspire and captivate our students?

Or do we become caught up in a race to save time wherever possible with ICT being a tool or short cut to achieve this and have we lost sight of what is really important?

My short answer is yes.

Yes as educators we do try to cut down as much time as possible, I mean thats just part of time management right?

Yes, ICT has given us the tools to be able to do this effectively by using programs such as class dojo and the interactive whiteboard.

However, it seems to me that teachers are using ICT to do the same tasks we were doing before just more efficiently. For example, I used the interactive whiteboard to demonstrate how to write the letter P to my grade one class. But, the whiteboard began to freeze and became unresponsive. (As technology sometimes does…) Instead I quickly drew up lines on the black board and continued the lesson. I found that the students were just as engaged when I used the black board compared to the interactive whiteboard because ICT did not change the fact that I was demonstrating how to write letters.

So my question is, could ICT have a greater purpose? How can teachers revolutionise the use of ICT so that it transforms our practice and enhances the minds of our students?

My learning journey so far in using ICT…

Right now for me, I’m at the very beginning of this course and just learning about the role and use of ICT in the classroom. I thought it was only appropriate to discuss where I am on my learning journey so far.

Throughout my professional experiences, the most common ICT I’ve learned to use is the interactive whiteboard. From my experience in a special needs classroom, I’ve seen how the use of sensory materials are especially crucial in calming and engaging the students. In this classroom, the interactive whiteboard was used for maths and spelling games to enhance the learning of the students. (It was probably the only time some of the higher special needs students were fully engaged!) Additionally I used an ipad which had a funny little program I forget the name of, but basically you could create fireworks by tapping and swiping your fingers across the screen. The faster you tapped, the more fireworks you created, the slower you moved your finger the louder and bigger the fireworks became. This program was used to help one student improve her fine motor skills and was the one of the few activities that engaged her for more than five minutes.

Additionally I also taught a grade five class at the same school and they used a lot of powerpoints in their lessons. At first I welcomed this as a beginning teacher as I found it easier to organise my lesson through the structure of a powerpoint rather than the pressure of thinking on the spot. (Don’t worry I have since learned to improvise!) However in reflection, this class was accustomed to using powerpoint all the time and only doing individual work. When I realised this, I aimed to provide lessons which used both powerpoint and printed stimulus to engage the students and I found this worked very effectively. (The students were excited at the opportunity to work in groups and not have to look at the board! They were engaged in their work for a solid 2 hours!)

From these experiences, I’ve seen how ICT can both empower and limit the students learning and I strongly believe that it’s the reason behind the use of ICT that will affect the overall outcome of student learning.

The Curse of Knowledge

I first heard about the The Curse of Knowledge through completing the activities in Module 1 and as I was reading, I was reminded of an experience I had in one of my classes this week which caused me to reflect on my knowledge as a teacher.

According to Wikipedia, The Curse of Knowledge is defined as,

“The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that leads better-informed parties to find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed parties.”

(Module 1 – what you will know and how you will learn Retrieved: March 6, 2015, from: http://usqstudydesk.usq.edu.au/m2/mod/book/view.php?id=321219&chapterid=20280)

The Curse of Knowledge was clearly demonstrated to me in my first history class for EDX2190. We were asked to develop inquiry questions about a piece of stimulus. The point of this task wasn’t about the questions we were asking but the process of how we developed those questions.

I struggled with this task because my brain had gone back to Year 12 history student mode and after looking at the stimulus for 2 minutes, I had already decided what  the stimulus was about. I was unable to justify or explain my conclusions to my classmates. I hadn’t thought about the process I used or how I could teach students to follow a similar process.

From this experience I learned that in everything I teach as a teacher, it’s really important for me to remember that for some of the students, they are learning skills for the first time and really need someone to explicitly teach the process in developing the skill. However what can we do as educators when we have students who don’t understand? What strategies can we use to help those students? More importantly for this course, what programs exist for educators in helping these students understand?