Pushing ourselves with technology

"...their explorations of new environments seemed to be brokered by friends and families, and aimed to reinforce those relationships rather than develop new ones; they seemed to enjoy using digital environments to find new ways of being within existing relationships...they at times expressed suspicion regarding environments with which they were not familiar."

This quote summarizes a majority of technology users in my social circle. We do tend to see technology as an isolating thing or something we use to make our preexisting relationships, tasks, communications, etc., more convenient. However, most of my friends are also self-aware and make jokes that even with the vast international networking capabilities and endless information, we use our internet each day for the same mundane texting and scrolling. I think it's easy to put technology in a 'box' and know that it's good for X, Y, and Z, but it's more important to think about using technology in ways that are new. Our goal as teachers is help students 'learn how to learn' - we want them to leave school wanting and knowing how to seek out answers and to innovate. As teachers we should be modeling this behavior by trying new things, even if we are still learning ourselves.

The case studies used in this chapter also made it clear that having evidence and research to back up your teaching decisions is critical in introducing something new. As new teachers, it's easy to give in to more experienced teachers (with dissenting opinions) without pushing back. Understanding how or why our choices will benefit our students protects us from falling into the 'way things always have been' mindset.

I selected the NCTE website as my source this week because there are always new publications and studies posted. Having a reliable source of data as well as a collection of voices who are constantly seeking to improve their curriculum has been very beneficial!


Carrington, V., Robinson, M. (2009). Digital Literacies: Social learning and  classroom practices. London: Sage Publications.

Why We Need Evidence Based Practices

"...the notion of “Digital Native” is a misperception of young people's technology use that idealizes and homogenizes their skills and interests. Available evidence of young people's technology access and use is limited in scope and depth but suggests diversity rather than conformity."

First, I chose a quote from Chapter 11 because the chapter title piqued my interest. "Intellectual Field or Faith-Based Religion" seemed irrelevant to topics in technology at first glance, but as I read I appreciated the metaphors Bennett and Maton used.

I liked that the authors switched the focus onto empirical evidence for using technology and teaching digital skills in this chapter. As teachers, we often see firsthand benefits to doing things certain ways in our classrooms, but as a teaching community it's important to have real evidence to support our practices (especially if we are collectively trying a new approach).

As a pre-service teacher who has grown up with technology, works in a technological field, and is now enrolled in a class dedicated to the use of technology, it's easy to accept and push the idea that technology is a huge benefit to education. However, at this moment I wouldn't be able to cite why incorporating technology is beneficial other than a few experience-based reasons and the teaching standards for 21st century learning.

The quote I selected relates to the idea of becoming more aware of all the factors that go into technological skills and use. We can't lump students' approaches to technology together in the same way we can't lump technological use in the classroom together - we need to evaluate how it is being used, why, and then what steps we need to take.

Source

I chose to screenshot a part of a WVU's website for online courses to be submitted for review. A team compares a class to a specialized rubric and then makes suggestions for how to improve the quality of the course. This week's reading was about evaluating our choices and what information we use to make those choices. As teachers, it's important to stay connected with outside peers, groups, etc. to make sure we're still able to justify our choices.How stale and sad would our classrooms seem if we kept every decision to ourselves and never asked for a second opinion?

Bennett, S., & Maton, K. (2011). Intellectual Field or Faith-Based Religion. In Thomas, M. (Ed.). Deconstructing digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new literacies. New York: Routledge.

Digital Literacy's Place in "Traditional" Approaches to Literacy

"First, in order for children to function as competent and confident users of text in the twenty-first century, I would argue that we need to view the relationship between traditional and digital media as reciprocal. In other words, though I agree that we need to find ways in which to help children to build on their experiences with traditional media in order to inform their interactions with digital texts, it is equally important to understand how the use of digital texts informs young children's relationships with texts of all kinds."

Here we have a 'chicken or egg' conundrum. In my school experience, classes generally used 'traditional' texts with digital texts and tools sprinkled in as supplemental materials. However, today's generations are becoming more and more acquainted with digital literacy and digital texts before being exposed to what we consider 'traditional' texts. So which do we use to inform which? I appreciated that this chapter emphasized both and showed the 'reciprocity' between these two types of literacies. 

It's important within any area of teaching to think about how students will be approaching your subject, their past experiences with your topics, and their preconceptions about school. I found this chapter particularly relevant as an English teacher - at the end of the day, we are helping students build strategies to understand texts (and in turn everything else...but that's another blog post entirely). We should be using texts that are both familiar and unfamiliar to meet our students' interests and needs.  

It was also interesting that Levy (2011) found the transfer of these digital literacy skills could possibly be impacted by gender. It appeared in the study that boys were more likely to transfer their digital skills from home contexts to class contexts. I'd love to find a similar study done with older students. This is definitely an area I plan to read more about!

Source

It irks me when people downplay the usefulness of things like film in the classroom. For example, I'm using a film adaptation of Macbeth with machine guns and have had a colleague say it's not 'real' Shakespeare. If students are understanding the major themes and are able to make connections, I really don't mind if people wave their Norton Anthologies disapprovingly!

Levy, R. (2011). Young Children, Digital Technology, and Interaction with Text.  In Thomas, M. (Ed.). Deconstructing digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new literacies. New York: Routledge.

Expectations vs. Reality

"The 'smarts' and the expertise need to be developed within the individual as well as within the technology."

Here's an honest anecdote behind my choice to include this quote: When I entered college, I didn't know what 'peer-reviewed' meant or why it was added as a requirement for my research - I simply knew that I needed to check the 'peer-reviewed' box in the search filter when looking for articles. I also didn't know how to navigate the physical library on campus, but I knew enough to search through their databases for online articles. 

While Chapter 8 talks about broader issues, my experiences are examples of an over-reliance on technology doing the thinking and not understanding the why behind my use of it. No one taught me how to research, but they did give me a rubric to follow when finding sources. I let technology do the rest. It's easy to assume that because students have tools to access to so much information they should be able to put it to use. However, we're still responsible for scaffolding and teaching about using these tools. 

"Despite most students being avid Internet users, the majority are not sophisticated scholarly users of the Internet." 

I definitely entered my classroom with assumptions about my students' skill sets in technology. My students knew how to 'jailbreak' their Chromebooks to allow banned sites, they knew how to customize the displays, and they knew how to disable audio and video. However, some students were baffled when I asked them to send a message from their student email. Almost all knew how to get to their email, but almost half of them needed step by step instructions for how to create and send an email.

It was a bizarre feeling - they had taught me so much about Chromebooks yet something I considered 'simple' required a mini-lesson. Chapter 8 brought up the importance in understanding that 'Digital Natives' do not necessarily possess all of the knowledge needed for being successful technological users. With their advanced skill sets in other areas, it's easy to forget to address the 'basics' and important skills they will need in the future.

Source

I chose this "expectation" cartoon because it does a good job at representing how I want my students to use the internet versus how most of us actually see it used. There is a lot of potential in using technology, but it takes the humans behind the technology to cooperate and want to use it for good. I did have to crop the "reality" comparison of the article due to profanity, but it was essentially two people using the internet to argue in a non-constructive way. 

Kennedy, G., & Judd, T. (2011). Beyond Google and the “Satisficing” Searching of Digital Natives.  In Thomas, M. (Ed.). Deconstructing digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new literacies. New York: Routledge.

Learning by Playing: Videogames in the Classroom

Videogames can develop problem solving skills and are purposely designed to make problem solving interesting. Developers create games that balance difficulty and gratification to keep players interested in their game. Even the smallest details, such as the background music, are considered when deciding how to attract players and keep their concentration. In open world videogames where tasks are more open ended, players begin to practice self-regulatory and goal setting habits.

While the videos from last class were informative about the many surface level benefits of videogames (eyesight, reaction time, recall, etc.), I have seen more benefits from the storyline and character side of videogames. Some popular games, such as Bioshock, are firmly based in classic literature (in this case, Atlas Shrugged). It's much easier to feel engaged with the storyline in the game than reading the actual novel. You receive similar messages and can find symbols, characters, and dialogue to analyze, but delivered in different ways. Other story-driven games provide as much depth in character and lore as full length novels. Some of the settings, such as in the Fallout  series, require players to consider life in alternate histories and time frames. Some games even require players to think through character connections and lore in order to understand the story of the game, which is essentially the same set of skills students would use when faced with a challenging novel.

Source

I chose the game map from the Witcher series to represent how much can be explored through games. This particular series infuses Polish fairytales into an immersive world where players must analyze characters, analyze lore, and make decisions that influence their environment. Games can be incredibly complex and provide opportunities for learning about any theme or concept that would be taught using a traditional novel. 

Satisficing vs. Producing

This way of working with content fundamentally changes the traditional way of creating content as experienced through the printed book. This “production mode” and the new competencies of remixing (Erstad, 2008) have also raised issues about students’ active role in knowledge practices.

I liked this section's emphasis on active roles in learning. Previous chapters have explained how access to information alters education, but this chapter went further in explaining how students can use technology to produce meaningful evidence of their learning. I think this falls into a teacher comfort issue rather than any intention to keep our students as retrievers over producers. It's generally easier to design and grade assignments where students retrieve information and create the same type of content based on that information. However, giving more freedom in the "production mode" can be difficult because students don't have the same background knowledge in creating content, it's difficult to compare different types of content for a uniform grading criteria, and as a teacher you are expected to be familiar with the creation process as well. Overall, I think everyone agrees with the premise of active learning, but I'm aware that combining active learning and technology comes with its own challenges.

We feel this term—satisficing—accurately captures and describes students’ online information-seeking behavior in academic contexts. Students often adopt, and appear to be comfortable with, a “near enough is good enough” approach that is expedient and somewhat superficial, and in doing so eschew the precision, depth, and persistence that we usually associate with finding and appraising the best scholarly information and resources. 

"Satisficing" is going to be my word of the week. I'm always a little disheartened when I hear students present their rough drafts and ask "is this enough?" It seems like the sole goal for most assignments is completion with minimal effort. As a fellow human, I can empathize. Sometimes we do just try to get through tasks and we can't be expected to devote 100% of ourselves into every task. However, creating a habit of going only until something is 'good enough' is problematic. Infusing self-regulatory practices in assignments can help with developing feelings of accountability and pride in work, but it's also important to model what you expect from students. I often tell my students I want them to 'expand a thought' or 'dig deeper' but they have to understand what I'm talking about before I can expect them to follow my advice. It's also our job to help students see a why behind their assignment and reasons they can feel more connected to their task. 

Thomas, M. (Ed.). (2011). Deconstructing digital natives : Young people, technology, and the new literacies. New York: Rutledge.

Defining and Setting Goals (or How to Avoid a Classroom Mutiny)

"The essential nature of traditional skill development for students further indicates that today's students are not so different from previous generations: they still need to learn the same basic skills." 

“The question of working to a plan, as in responding to a specified task goal, is different to unstructured, open-ended activity at the computer. If we do not know what the task is, we will not be able to determine whether learners are on or off task."

I chose these quotes because they were both good reminders that lesson planning (even with technology) should not be an overwhelming feat. I agree that students aren't that different in their learning abilities or learning needs than students of the past. For example, English classes still develop communication, literacy, and analytical skills. We may have different forms of media and tools, but the needs are essentially the same. Adding a technological element isn't 'changing' what we're teaching, it's only meant to adapt content to be more relevant for the students' needs. 

The second quote is more of a personal mantra for my classroom at this point. I'm slowly (but surely!) getting through Shakespearean tragedies with my students and the only reason I have a shred of sanity left is having clear, defined goals for each class. I've found that if I don't have a clear answer prepared for "why are we doing this?" then it's easy for a mutiny to take place and for apathy to set in. While there is value in some unstructured tasks for developing problem solving skills, goals are necessary for students to understand your expectations. 

Source

I chose a Goldberg machine to represent my feelings from this reading. Feeling like a successful educator can seem overwhelming, complicated, and (some days) impossible. It's important to keep the end goal in mind, develop a strategy, and keep without the little things from taking control of your thinking.