What?
The trend
that is most relevant to me in my teaching practice is the impact of digital
learning on students, teachers and the classroom environment itself.
To start
this reflection, I remembered back to the beginning of my teaching career, and
in my classroom, I had an old PC that no one really knew what to do with, it
was unreliable and took ages to start up. Basically, it just sat in the corner,
taking up space.
Fast
forward to about ten years ago, when the Ministry of Education was implementing
ICT professional development across regions. I was keen to be part of this initiative as I
had already began blogging with my students as a way of recording their learning
and sharing it with their whanau. This
began my journey into using digital learning in my classroom practice, sharing
this learning with my colleagues and eventually into leading this area within
our school.
If you walked
into my classroom today, you would see all my students fully engaged in a range
of learning tasks and that a big part of that is using digital technology to enhance
their learning.
So what?
I agree
completely with Daggett (2014) in that digital technology will only impact on
our learners if the context and purpose are meaningful and authentic.
“Using
technology thoughtfully for instructional purposes will allow us to stretch
learners’ thinking in ways that will lead to success in today’s increasingly
global
economy and
rapidly evolving digital environment.”
So one of
the challenges I see at this point, is to ensure that teachers are not just
using digital technology as time fillers, or free time choice and activities
but they are continually thinking how to move their students’ achievement with
technology as a support for this.
Now what?
I feel
increasing lucky that I work in a school that embraces change and with colleagues
who are keen to evaluate and improve their teaching practice, through teacher
inquiries and setting goals alongside their leadership team. As Daggett (2014) and Sinek (2015) both state
that the ‘why’ is the first place to start in beginning new initiatives and
that once schools and teachers understand or know this – the decision about how
you implement and what practices you believe are important become obvious. As a school and leadership team, we use this
model as a guide for our strategic plans and professional development.
For 2019,
we have the support of our Community of Learning in implementing and embedding
the digital curriculum with in our schools as our main focus for the year. We
have funding to resource our school and the benefit of experts in the area of
digital technology to help us lead our teachers.
With 3 of
our teachers undertaking the Mindlab course this year, we need to continue to
share our learning with our teams and lead the initiatives to come in 2019. I have
reflected on a lot of our learning this year, and believe that the SAMR model
of how digital technology can impact on teaching and learning is an aspect that
our colleagues will find increasingly valuable. I intend to led this in my own
syndicate by ensuring that when we are planning our inquiry units we are increasingly
reflecting on this model and trying to extend ourselves and the applications/tools
we use.
References:
Daggett, B. (2014). Addressing Current
and Future Challenges in Education. Retrieved from http://www.leadered.com/pdf/2014MSC_AddressingCurrentandFutureChallenges.pdf
Pearson. (2013). Global trends: The world is changing faster than at any time in human history.[video].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdZiTQy3g1g
Hi Jac. I completely agree with your comments about the importance of using our digital technology meaningfully to move the learning onward not just as another way of practising learned facts. I found the SAMR model very useful in clarifying my thinking around learning activities using digital. There are some excellent resources on TKI giving concrete examples of each level of the model.
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