The Broader Professional Context

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

Sinek (2015) Retrieved from https://startwithwhy.com/