After this weeks presentation I felt that I had not done much to provide tools to my students, yet at the same time each of my students has been finding themselves solutions to problems that exist in their own learning. In Alberta, students all have access to universal accommodations on all their provincial based testing. Prior to this change, schools had to have documentation of the need for these accommodations for individual students.

Some of these accommodations include:

1. Extra Time
2. Large Print Tests
3. Audio
4. Writing in Isolation

For several of my students, these tools level the playing field for them. As we are coming to learn, equity is not the same as equality. And now because these tools are accessible for all students, there is less stigma attached to them, so those students who truly need these accommodations are able to access them comfortably and free from judgement.

Similarly to the Ted Talk by Jane, I have a cousin who was provided with the opportunity to have a better quality of life. My cousin was an extremely active athlete, she had a scholarship to a University in the United States where she played both basketball and Volleyball. When she returned home, she got a job teaching at the high school she attended. While she was coaching she had a stroke, and after complications, was unable to communicate verbally and lost most of her mobility. She has been supported by Kinsmen with tools that allow her to communicate. She has assistive technology that allows her to use a computer to ‘speak’. This technology allows her to post on Facebook and share moments from her life.

Although I do not use much assistive technology, during Covid it was essential to record lessons for students who were unable to be present in class., as without this they would have missed key lessons and information.

For students that have struggled with dyslexia, there are so many tools available to them to make reading that much easier.

A major challenge that I have come across is when students get used to only using specific assistive technology, yet when we come to the major exams in the province, these tools are unavailable as they are specific to chrome, or as preinstalled software. Although the province of Alberta has done a good job to acknowledge that all students should have access to accommodations, the ability to access the technology to do so is not universal.

The use of assessment technology in my teaching career has been sporadic at best.  As a teacher of mainly English, I do not have many tests, and if I do, they are paper and pencil.  

When we were in the throws of Covid, I did have some quizzes on the reading that we had been doing in class, so I leveraged Google Forms as my assessment tool.  As I have noted previously, our school uses Hapara (Workspace) as our online platform and it leverages the use of the Google Suite of software.  So, the choice of Google Form was easy, and some previous experience with the software to elicit feedback from students gave me the familiarity.

As highlighted by Neumann et al. (2019), Forms allows for easy administration of the information, as well as quickly allows for data to be available to the teacher.  

A concern that I had was the lack of control.  I was unable to control the environment from which students operated, as we were in remote learning and students could complete the quiz at any time.  I had considered students completing the quiz during our synchronous sessions, but due to the disparity in student progress, this was not feasible.  The assessment data was used then to inform student knowledge and allowed me to help fill in the gaps for their major writing projects. 

Another tool that I used frequently were Smartboard Response Clickers.  

I was able to take my previous PowerPoint presentations and export them to Smart Notebook software.  In Smart’s software teachers were able to place questions and then students could use the ‘clickers’ to respond.

Setting up each presentation required 20-25 minutes to create and the addition of the questions did not take much more time.

At the end of the presentation you were then able to go through the data and review it with your class.

If you were just looking to gather some data and not track student progress, then the process for handing out these ‘clickers’ was simple.  As the clickers that we had only had basic numerical responses, it was a challenge to have student names attached to their data.  A system that I devised, as I wanted to use some of the data for summative marks, was to have each student have a preassigned ‘clicker’ that they used.  

The goal in using these assessment tools was to quickly gain information that I could use to provide feedback to my students.  

I still have the Smart Response clickers in my classroom, but I have not used them more than once or twice as the use of google forms has supplanted it.  There is less set up in using forms, but the lack of integration into presentations does change the way that I had taught in the past.  Now, there may be a method to integrate the two, but I have not made the effort to find a solution to this.

Decentralizing seems like stepping back into the past.  I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know that the idea of Web 3.0 is a bit confusing.

Coming from Saskatchewan to Alberta was a bit of a jarring experience in the mid-2000s.  If I needed car insurance, I went to SGI; if I needed power for my house, I went to SaskPower; I could go on, but I think the point is made.  In Alberta, I had to choose who my insurance provider was -what in tarnations?!  As I stated, it was jarring, I liked the idea of knowing who I was supposed to go to for the services that I needed.  I am ok with a lack of choice.

Web 3.0 feels a bit like this.  

I trust known entities.  

The world today runs on the centralization of power and resources.  If I see the TD Canada Trust logo, I know that I can put my money in the bank and I will have access to it from any location that has that same logo.  

When we are instructing our students on how to access information on the web, we know that they are typically going to utilize Google, or Bing if they accidentally open the Edge browser.  But they have grown to trust these giant corporations to help them gather their information.  Not only do they trust these corporations to give them access to information, there is an almost implicit trust that these organizations will be responsible with the information.  That somehow keeping their data in the cloud protects them.

If we look to the Netflix film, The Social Dilemma, it presents the idea that big tech is watching, scheming, and manipulating us through the use of social media.  I know that I originally started to use facebook as a way to connect with people that I thought I would never talk to again.  I remember after using the platform for years, and I was not even talking to any of these people that I had reconnected with that I started to purge my friends list.  It had nothing to do with what was being posted, as FB at the time was a very different beast, it was because I no longer had anything in common with them.

Today, social media seems much more insidious than it did back in the late 2000s.  These platforms have gameified their systems, found ways to appeal to a person’s sense of accomplishment.  Again, The Social Dilemma highlights how tech companies have weaponized the use of our personal data to keep us on their platforms.  It reminded me of my time in another class, we had a discussion around the idea that the lack of TV and commercials has had a huge negative impact on how people interact with media.  As kids, we would watch a show, have commercials, and there was an ending to a show.  It signaled us to change tasks.  Now, with platforms like TikTok, there are no real commercials, there is no end of the show.  We can now just ‘doom scroll’ to get the fix that never seems to be there.

Web 3.0 won’t bring about an end to this issue, but it does signal a possible shift.  It should allow us to have more control, but it will be up to the individuals to make the choice.  I doubt it is very likely that 3.0 will have an opt-in feature to get out of the monetization of one’s personal information.  We gave that away a long time ago.  It will be the next generation of teachers that will have to make this big push in media education.

As with many of my colleagues, the pandemic brought about a large shift in how I presented my lessons to my students.  We were required, almost overnight, to transition to an online platform that most teachers had previously never had to explore, let alone use as the raft to carry their students down the raging river.

Five years prior to the pandemic, our school division had started to use an online platform called Hapara.  This platform utilizes google’s suite of software applications and packages it into an easy to use interface.  At the time, my principal had tasked me with the challenge of using this software as a place to have students do their assignments, as the software has a system where you create a document and as students ‘start’ the assignment, it duplicates your original document and creates a copy.  They can then submit their assignments virtually and we can avoid printing.  This idea seemed like an easy solution to the division moving students and staff away from having a ‘personal drive’ on their servers.

As I became way more comfortable using Hapara, it became apparent that I could host all of my files, links, videos, rubrics, and lessons.  With this discovery, I was able to slowly build my units into this online platform, and as each year wrapped up, I could then roll this unit over and add/tweak/build upon all that I had created previously.  I stopped keeping a teacher’s planning book, as I was able to track all of my students and marks online.

When the pandemic hit, I had very little preparation to shift online, as I had been functioning in this system already.  It was a matter of having the right video conferencing platform to best meet the needs of my students.  The first week or two, I was able to assist my colleagues in this shift to online, and their learning curve was much steeper than mine, but we worked together to mitigate frustrations.  This quick shift to online was frustrating for many teachers, and much of that was based around their lack of skill with technology.  

There is a lot of comfort in the platform that I currently use.  Presentation software is a matter of personal taste, and a willingness to spend the time to understand the strengths and challenges that it presents.  Within my own classroom, I tend to not introduce much in the way of new tools for students to use, as I already have access to an integrated suite of google applications.  Periodically, I will have students who step outside of this walled garden to try out different software with some success.  For me, at the end of the day, the time required to teach the use of multiple tools is not worth the time I have available.

To shift back online, I would find very little difficulty in the use of the tools and software available.  My classes already exist virtually, and any of my students can access them as long as they have a computer/phone available to them.  The biggest loss to those that are not present is that they miss out on the conversation that takes place, and that is something that we tend to lose when we shift to online anyways.

So, I am quite comfortable, thank you very much.  Until there is something else that comes along to replace my current set of tools, I am content with where my class exists, and how it functions.  Could it use a tune up, probably, but that is a slow process that requires a specific need and outcome to change.

As soon as the “Single-tasking is the New Multitasking” video came on I felt an immediate urge to multitask.  I am not shy about my own struggles with task completion, and I know that I can be a hyper-focused uni-tasker.  So when our ‘hero’ in this video is texting, writing a memoir, cooking supper, taking a shower, and reading a book on ADHD, I get the joke, but I feel the pull.  I know that I reached for my phone once while the video was playing -smirked at the thought- and realized I had missed part of the video anyways.

The internet is going to be whatever we want it to be.  This is not a criticism of anything in this class, or anyone else, but merely an observation.  If we solely look at the structure of this class.  We are accessing this course in a digital environment, posting blogs to varied platforms, have discord as another platform to share ideas, using resources from all over the world, all while teaching our own classes.  We are being trained to use all of these different ‘productivity’ tools as a part of our course mark.  There are challenges that come from organizing a course around education technology, but with a fully formed brain (somedays I wonder), I can find a way to manage.

If we then look at our students in our classrooms, there will be students who are diagnosed with ADHD, so their ability to single-task will be difficult.  But because they are aware of their diagnosis, they can use strategies to help manage this.  Those that are operating in the world, undiagnosed, they are going to find things much more challenging.  For those students, the internet is going to be a rabbit hole that they climb into every single time they set out to be productive.  So, while our students are sitting and trying to complete a task, we give them 80 minutes to be single-minded on a piece of writing.  The structure of this classroom assumes that they are going to be able to focus on that single task.  Which they will struggle with.  On top of that, they have a supercomputer in their pocket, binging and buzzing, with things that are of much more interest for them.  It isn’t just the internet that is the distraction, it is the world around them -the one that never stops- and it is calling for them.

So in many ways, the internet is going to be a reflection of who is using it, and how they have come to learn to use it.  

Being able to put some universal support in place will make life easier for every single student in the classroom.  As with Alberta’s Diploma exams, which now have a set of universal accommodations, teachers need to put in place a variety of supports to help meet the needs of every student.  This document lays out some examples of ways to support students across a variety of needs.  

Finally, as many educators have come to see, the technology teacher does not exist in every school.  With that, each individual teacher is the one who is having to instruct students in the use of technology.  If you are in the elementary end, you are usually the gym, music, art, and technology teacher along with the core subjects.  There will be some shortcomings in an area or two, and as technology has become a part of daily work, the teaching of digital citizenship and a healthy relationship with technology does not seem to get the time that it needs.

Undermining a system that was designed to produce factory workers is ok in my books.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

When I look at this quote by Postman, I can’t help but feel as though the context would really help frame the statement.  On its own, the quote can mean one of a multitude of things.  But the slant that I am taking has more to do with undoing a system that no longer serves a purpose.

Education is no longer in the hands of traditional teaching and those teachers.  Rote learning serves little purpose beyond taking a test that requires hard dates and facts.  

Link to study

I can’t help but think of why Postman would claim that Sesame Street is seeking to undermine the education system.  If we look at some of our own learning in this course, we have seen that other tools, such as blackboard, have already been blamed for the failings of the education system.  So why not put the target squarely on a show that engages students?

There is discomfort in the idea that technology can replace some of the roles that traditional education has had in the past.  If we no longer need to go to the library, then how will students learn to find information that was written, printed, and then not updated for 10-12 years?  Facts change.  If we learn that cholesterol is bad for you, we take that information and use it as fact.  Yet, we learn that there are two types of cholesterol, ldl and hdl, we then understand that we need cholesterol to help us process the other cholesterol.  

When we look at the implications of technology in the classroom, it is hard to deny the fact that it is here to stay.  When I look at my own practices, I have come to rely very heavily on Google’s suite of software.  I know that I greatly appreciate being able to hop into a shared document with a student to assist them with their ideas.  For a student, being able to take your own device home and ‘remotely’ (what does that even mean anymore?) access their own writing.  When I left the building as a high school student, if I didn’t have my floppy disk and the same version of windows on my PC, I was out of luck when it came to wrapping up work.  

The teacher is no longer the center of learning in the classroom.  There are some pieces of knowledge that I hold, but that is because of my time with a book, not because I decide what is valuable information.  For one of my students to supplement my learning with youtube, I would consider that a win.  If we take a look at the chart below, we need to understand that there are so many avenues for student learning that we directly impact, and others that are a bit more out of our sphere of influence.  If I can tap into using some school based tech to engage my students in learning, then I will use that.  But if I have students who hold some of that key learning, then I would also consider leveraging that as well.

In the end, I do believe that education has become a partnership between student and teacher in a much more complex manner.  Both parties will need to make use of all tools available to them to best meet the needs of the learner.  Sometimes the learner will be the student, and other times it will be the teacher.

Education fails when we worry where the source of learning comes from.