Blog Post 2: Hand Held Devices

The use of hand held mobile computing devices in the classroom is still a rare occurrence in 2015 since the authors of this study could only find nine teachers to participate who were from Michigan, Tennessee, New York, Kentucky, and Mississippi.  The kinds of devices evaluated in this article includes IPads, personal cell phones, and e-readers. The kinds of barriers to this practice include the same kinds of factors that were present when computers began to be a normal part of educational equipment.  Unfortunately, many schools have banned the use of personal mobile computing devices due to concerns about distractions and security making the use of them for educational reasons impossible. However if the rules changed to include them, other barriers are still present including resources, training, and standardization.  Teachers most often complained that the school’s networks did not perform adequately to support the use of these devices.  Some teachers have managed to use the devices effectively but only when they received support from their administrative teams.  The most effective example was a teacher whose district issued an IPad to every student in the class that became theirs for the school year.  For teachers, record keeping was made mobile and fast with the use of personal cell phones or IPads.  Attendance and behavior issues could be recorded via text, photo, or video and recovered quickly for use in discussions with counselors, parents, administrators, and students.  The applications used most often were iMovies, Evernote, games, and PuppetPals.  Although the use of these devices in the classroom excited students, they are mostly used as a supplement to the regular curriculum instead of becoming central to instruction.

My hope is to integrate mobile computing devices into my library so students and faculty can use them creatively and often.  Distance learning for students with attendance issues due to health issues can be improved through the use of mobile computing devices.  These students with access to an IPad loaded with a reading application can have their reading and writing assignments in one place.  An e-reader can be used for reading assignments to use at home rather that dragging a pile of books to doctor’s appointments and hospital visits.  These students can write their essays and complete assignments and email them to their teachers who can use Evernote to annotate as they grade.  The average student can benefit from reading on an e-reader especially if it is equipped with a dictionary linked to the text, so students can quickly check the definition for unfamiliar words.  IPads in the library can be used for making movies and adding voice overs to PowerPoints  allowing non-test reader response journals. Students can use personal response systems to take quizzes during group library presentations to check for understanding.  Book discussions in the library can be enhanced with students sitting comfortably with an IPad or personal cell phone that they can use to look up events or unknown words mentioned in the text to improve their understanding.

Reference: Grant, M., & Tamim, S., & Brown, D.B., & Sweeney, J.P., & Ferguson, F. K., & Jones, L. B. (2015). Teaching and learning with mobile computing devices: Case study in k-12 classrooms. TechTrends, 59, p. 32-45.

Blog Post 1: Technology Strengths and Weakness

           The International Society for Technology in Education (2008) advocates a well-trained, forward looking teacher who can interface with multiple types of digital tools and incorporate them into authentic real-world lessons. This requires a teacher who has had access to the latest and most updated digital tools and who has been trained and can move easily between different types of formats and platforms.  Having been in the “trenches” of teaching for 14 years, I can say that these standards are very difficult to attain.  There will always be room for improvement because teachers are limited by the digital tools available in their schools, which are governed by administrators, school boards, and ultimately communities.  This is where creativity becomes the cornerstone to branching out of the comfort zone of the four walls of a classroom.  These standards cannot be accomplished all at once and therefore are a goal that should inspire teachers for all of their careers.

            My strengths center around “facilitating creativity,” “promoting digital citizenship,” and “Professional growth and leadership” (ISTE, 2008).  I truly want my students to tap into their own thinking abilities and have always promoted lessons that encourage this activity. Whether they were video recording Shakespeare scenes, or responding to discussion questions on our Blackboard platform, my students were actively engaged in incorporating technology into their learning.  As an English teacher, promoting digital citizenship is a primary directive.  Encouraging original work and avoiding purposeful and inadvertent plagiarism is the cornerstone of the English curriculum.  Looking for better and more effective ways to teach students all the skills they need to function in our modern world is what pushes me to continue to learn more about teaching and now to join this program for school librarianship.  My goals are to become better at adopting new ways of using digital tools to improve my effectiveness in my career in high school arena.

          Although I feel I have done a good job of incorporating digital tools in my classroom, I feel I can do better.  My weaknesses center on designing and adapting digital age learning experiences, and assessments and collaborating using digital tools (ISTE, 2008).  I feel that assessments should be different from pen and paper when given using digital tools.  While I had a student response system, it really only supported the old multiple choice testing format, which in my mind was not revolutionary.  The use of digital tools should highlight synthesized thinking and be much more than a redo of the types of assessments used for standardized tests.  Reaching out beyond my classroom walls to a global community is a new concept for the practices I used in my English classroom.  I am very interested in making every minute count and have felt that teaching under the block system limited my ability to do this.  While we engaged in reading across cultural and geographical lines, my students never participated in cross cultural or global learning experiences.  While I realize this is possible using digital tools, I have not engaged with this practice. I have dabbled in using digital tools for collaboration; however, for the most part my colleagues were not well versed in using these tools, which limited my use of them.  As a result, I feel unsure of my ability to use them easily.    I hope that this school librarianship program will help me to see the value of these practices of using digital tools to enhance assessment and collaboration and to reach beyond the walls of my school to the global community.

Reference: National Society for Technology in Education, (2008). ISTE standards: Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards/standards-for-teachers

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