An essential question to consider: How do you evaluate, during your planning process, what technology tools you will use to deepen, assist, and/or inspire authentic learning?
One of my classmates mentioned this in the Twitter chat this week, but the first thing I consider when evaluating technology tools to use in my class is how long it will take my students to figure them out, and is that time worth what I’m using the technology for. I only get my students for about 50 minutes each day, but you take out about 15 for reading and housekeeping, so I’m left with about 35 minutes of valuable instruction time. I don’t want to incorporate technology that’s going to take away from that instruction time unless it’s going to significantly “deepen, assist, or inspire authentic learning”.
Another thing I consider when evaluating tech tools is, once my students learn to use it, then how well will it “deepen, assist, or inspire authentic learning” within my students? If it will add a layer to their understanding of the concepts in class, or encourage them to manipulate their knowledge in a new way, then it might be worth it.
I’ve experienced both success and failure when implementing tech because of this consideration or lack thereof. My first year or two teaching, I would have students use iMovie to reenact scenes from their novels or to make book trailers. What I intended to happen was for them to select important events from the story, key details, or some significant idea, and present it in a new format. Really what happened was: chaos, and a few coherent video summaries of novels that showed a basic understanding of what had been discussed already in class. I’m sure it has its benefits in other content areas, but I have since cut that activity out of my curriculum *cringe*
I have also seen success with new technology. Using the app Flipgrid, I incorporated it into a station during a novel unit. Students prepared a response reflecting on a question related to their reading, and then recorded a video of them reciting their response. This encouraged students to revise their reflection as they read it, and to practice the skill of speaking, which is a standard of ours. It also did not take up a significant portion of class time, and I was able to evaluate students on my own time, which freed me up during class to meet their immediate needs. This is definitely a piece of technology that I’m not using to its full advantage, but I fully intend to continue incorporate it as I plan future lessons.
Overall, I think it’s definitely important for me to evaluate the time consumption and effectiveness of each piece of technology I choose to incorporate into my classroom. My instructional time is too valuable to spend on technology that uses more time while producing less than desired results.
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