situational ingenuity of teachers: the key to transformative, content-focused technology integration
DESCRIPTION
This presentation was shared at a colloquium sponsored by the University of Houston, Victoria on April 28, 2014 (Please read the slide notes for generally what I said in the presentation). I share my vision for the use of digital technologies in education. I refer to it as transformative, content-focused classroom technology integration. I illustrate this concept through 3 stories of practice: from teachers, a school and its district, and a college of education. Tom is a mathematics teachers who designs a lesson with ropes, video, ipads, and graphing calculators to help students learn to write an equation for a trig function. Hilly High School began a iPad learning innovation in which all students got ipads - I share how they developed their vision which included both a technology-focus and a learning-focus. Finally, I share data on preservice teachers' use of social technologies and discuss how COEs could design a set of experiences that would develop preservice teachers to be connected educators. These will show the possibilities but also many of the challenges involved in this work. In these stories, I hope that you’ll discover ways that you, as a teacher, a school leader, a teacher educator, a parent, can assist in this transformation. I end by describing "situational ingenuity" and how I see teachers as most interested in this challenging work in their classrooms and how I see it as the key to designing content-focused, technology-supported innovations in classrooms.TRANSCRIPT
Transformative, content-focused classroom technology integration
Joan E. Hughes Associate Professor of Learning TechnologiesThe University of Texas at [email protected]://techedges.org@techedges
Introductions• Who are you? • Why did you come tonight? • What do you hope to learn? • What do you think of this topic?
21st Century Education
2000
2100
14%
• Critical Thinking• Communication• Collaboration• Creativity
• Critical Thinking• Communication• Collaboration• Creativity
The 4Cs
+• Connected• Content-focused• Computing (digital)
Content-focused
Critical ThinkingCommunicationCollaborationCreativityConnected
Computing (digital)
The 7Cs
✚
✚
✚
Image of the Possible: Rope Sine Wave Exploration
a story of standardization
I started this year, I did this filming project for the iPad and we went outside and we just kind of explored with popping ropes back and forth and watching a kind of sine wave form and then we took that back and froze a frame and made it a little see through and put it on graph paper. This is all on the iPad and then they had to figure out well if regular sine goes from 0-2 pi and your rope is 9’ long you know the period of this one is 0-9. Get out the calculator or graphing software and what makes the same curve stretch, what makes it squish and what makes it stretch vertically and squish vertically and find an equation that will map your rope.
…we [math team] all need to do the same because everybody needs to have the same thing and equal and all the same time so that makes it hard to be, unless you’re spending your weekends dialing this up as a perfect unit. Actually that needs to be about three weeks in advance so you can present it to your team, see if they like it. If they don’t, then you’ve got this discussion of well, if you don’t do that material and you don’t give them that quiz and that test, well that’s not fair. Your kids are making some frilly little project they’re going to get an “A” on and my kids have to factor something which is hell.…if they just say no we’re not doing that then I’m like oh good, I’ll just put this in a folder of things we’re not doing this year.
Image of the Possible: School-wide iPad Learning Innovation
a story of vision
The recent strategic 5-year plan “mentioned nothing about technology. Nothing.”
The 4Cs!• desire for their students to be citizens of
a “digital world.”• “they [HHS students] really are expected
to be problem solvers, analytical thinkers, be innovative, producers.”
• the “district has a vision of ‘it’s always been 21st century,’”
• “Well, don’t call it an iPad initiative. It’s about instruction and that’s [iPad] a tool.”
Image: Joe Ravi, CC-BY-SA 3.0
[They] went out there and started seeing the Apps, and it really came from an AHA moment that they all looked at each other and went, “Oh my word. All the things that we’ve been talking about – personalization, individual learning, student directed, activity based, producers of their knowledge – all could be accomplished with that one device, that mobility, that access 24/7. All of those things.”
VisionTransformative, improved education with iPads that involved ideas such as: personalization, student-directed, problem-solving, analytic thinking, innovation, production, creation, 24/7 Internet access to information and resources, and global learning.
To “use it [iPad]” and have their students “use it” (Colin)
To “get their feet wet” (Heather)
To “go out, explore, learn” (Aaron)
“Most of the teachers began just using it [iPad] as a substitute. So instead of taking notes on a piece of paper, you are using the iPad, and kids did that. Some really changed things in the classroom. Just depending on their comfort level.” (Colin)
Image of the Possible: Shifting the Social in a College of Education
an opportunity for connected learning
#nctechat#edtech
#edcamp
100% used Facebook
40% never read blogs, wrote blogs, or read wiki
90% never wrote wiki
80% never read/wrote Twitter
LinkedIn: 6% to 11% SNS for professional activities: 8% to 22%
*Shifts from 2008 - 2012
Experience #1Teacher-led, curricular-focused learning experience in closed
SNS
Experience #2K-12 or informal
education-based SNS teaching cases
Experience #3
Learner-centered, curricular-focused
learning experiences in open SNS
Situational Ingenuity
a lesson from pecan farming
“…[Pecan] farmers valued the opportunity to solve unexpected problems with pragmatic and innovative solutions. They defined themselves through their own rugged brand of situational ingenuity. 19th C farmers were experimenters, communicators, tinkerers. Confronting [nature’s] unpredictability was the essential challenge and appeal. It imbued daily work with meaning. It was what rewarded creativity and skill.”
McWilliams, J. (2013). The pecan: A history of American’s native nut. Austin: UTexas Press.
“…Teachers value the opportunity to solve unexpected problems with pragmatic and innovative solutions. They define themselves through their own rugged brand of situational ingenuity. 21st C teachers are experimenters, communicators, tinkerers. Confronting teaching and learning’s unpredictability is the essential challenge and appeal. It imbues daily work with meaning. It is what rewards creativity and skill.”
Transformative, content-focused classroom technology integration
Joan E. Hughes Associate Professor of Learning TechnologiesThe University of Texas at [email protected]@techedgesSlides available: http://www.slideshare.net/joanhughes/