Just ten years ago, did you imagine that a large population, perhaps even yourself, would carry in their pockets a digital, touch-screen device capable of playing music, talking on the phone, texting, checking internet, listening to the radio, and countless other applications? What can you imagine will be commonplace in ten more years? Will we finally have hover-boards to get us around town? It may be fun to dream, but teachers have a more concrete role in shaping the future. And, like it or not, a significant portion of that responsibility involves technology.
http://love2teachtech.hvcomputerguys.com/Portals/7/ed5.gif
Technology is an integral and immediately necessary part of the lives of every person who reads this entry. As teachers, it is essential that we not only prepare our students for a digital world they already have a large hand in creating, but we must prepare ourselves—after all, how can we teach students about a topic (about a whole world) we do not understand? As our students grow into adults, they will shape the world in ways we cannot even imagine. It would be irresponsible for educators to not make an effort to prepare students to be successful in this world.
But technology doesn’t have to be taught in isolation, in fact some researchers argue that it should never be. According to Harris, Mishra, & Koehler’s (2009) article “Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Learning Activity Types: Curriculum-based Technology Integration Reframed,” instruction should strike a balance between technology, content, and pedagogy. “Underlying truly effective and highly skilled teaching with technology, we argue, is technological pedagogical content knowledge” (p 401). They call the approach TPACK, which stands for Technological Pedagogy and Content Knowledge, and when used, it can be highly effective and engaging for students in the classroom.
http://cuip.uchicago.edu/~cac/ids/tpack.jpg
I do not think it is enough to simply teach technology, even if teaching a balanced, TPACK-based curriculum. Especially for social studies teachers, it is essential to teach students to be good citizens in the digital world. All through school, from K-12, teachers emphasize positive citizenship—whether it is being a positive member of a group, being a good friend, understanding one’s rights, understanding the importance of voting, or what-have-you. It only makes sense, then, that students should receive ample instruction in being a positive digital citizen. After all, many students spend nearly as much of their free time online as they do amongst the living. Ribble, Bailey, and Ross (2004) point out in their article “Digital Citizenship: Addressing Appropriate Technology Behavior” that schools “must prepare students to be members of a digital society or digital citizens” (p. 7).
I make an effort to use technology in my class where I feel comfortable enough; I am okay with taking chances, but I need to have some comfort with what I teach in my classroom. I have used the TPACK approach to editing and revising using a program call MyAccess, which uses intelimetric prompts to provide immediate feedback for student writing. I have combined pedagogy (instant feedback for revision), content (essays and stories based on literature and history), and technology (providing an online resource for students to utilize). The impact on student learning has been clear as student writing has improved exponentially, particularly with regard to basic writing conventions.
Looking to the future, I would like to put together my own lesson on cyber citizenship. Last year we had an investigator who works with cyber offenses talk to our entire school and it created some invaluable discussions—many students simply are not aware of the criminal implications of a lot of what happens online and with texting. For some reason, it is not obvious to them that real-world laws and expectations would translate to what happens on computers. I would like to continue this discussion further in my classroom and perhaps create an online discussion forum to allow students to practice interacting academically, socially, and responsibly at the same time. In addition to my teaching, I would also like to make a stronger effort in the future to keep up with state and national technological standards, rather than look exclusively at the standards of my particular content areas.
Technology is not exempt from values, and teachers have an opportunity to help instill positive values with their cyber behavior just as we do with their behavior in the classroom. There is SO MUCH out there in the cyber world, and unlike the real world, students can access the entire cyber world with the click of a mouse. This is challenging because there are countless unforeseeable opportunities for students to behave badly under a perceived cloak of cyber anonymity; this also means there are countless unforeseeable advancements in technological opportunities for teachers to keep up with.
Bibliography:
Harris, J., Mishra, P. & Koehler’s, M. (2009) Teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge and learning activity types: Curriculum-based technology integration reframed. Journal of Research on Technology in Education. 41(4), 393-416.
Ribble, M.S., Bailey, G. D., & Ross, T. W. (2004). Digital citizenship: Addressing appropriate technology behavior. Learning & Leading with Technology. 32(1), 6-12.
Tags: citizenship, content knowledge, Curriculum-based technology integration, cyber bullying, digital citizenship, EDTC6536, meta-reflection, modeling behavior, pedagogical knowledge, technology in the classroom, TPACK
