The technology of the 21st century has had tremendous impacts on the world as a whole; and in America, specifically the educational system and popular culture. The biggest thing that technology shares within both of these areas is its sheer scale and increase in recent years. The largest difference that I have seen however, is the dependence on this technology. Within American pop culture, technology is the center focus, whether it be new apps, computers, phones, or social media platforms. Within the American educational system however, we have seen an increased use of, but not reliance, on new technologies in the classroom. Educators all across the country use technology to aid in their teaching from identifying shapes with their kindergartners, determining parts of speech with those heading into middle school, or how chemical reactions occur for those at the high school level.
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Bloom's taxonomy is a model used to classify educational learning objectives. The image below shows this model in a visual way that can be helpful to its understanding and in depth explanations of each hierarchical step. I believe that this is a good model of how education should be approached in this digital classroom of the 21st century, however it must be adapted to incorporate this digital age that we now live in.
An example of this would be to incorporate drawings or diagrams on screen in the classroom. Instead of telling the students the parts of a cell for the tenth time, you can ask students to come up and drag the names of cellular organelles onto the part of the diagram that it correlates with. This would cause the students to apply their prior knowledge of the subject to the task at hand as well as evaluate the work of their peers to see if they had gotten the answer correct. As teachers, we must each know how to incorporate technology into our classrooms in order to best serve our students who are digital natives. The term digital native refers to those who have grown up in the digital age, while a digital immigrant refers to those that have become familiar with technology as adults. Today's students have grown up in a world where they have been able to choose and dedicate their attention to what interests them such as movies, music, and video games. This doesn't mean that today's students have shorter attention spans, it means that they have a different tolerance to information and the way that it is presented to them. Technology has made it easier for those who learn visually to picture things and categorize items in a way that helps them as students. Instead of simply lecturing students and giving them presentations, show them videos that explain things in a fun and engaging way, an episode of a TV show or a movie that incorporates what is learned in the classroom to real life or a story, or even use 3D models to show things such as anatomical models or even simply adding items together.
In today's world, almost all students have a great connection to technology including the internet and social media. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has created standards for which they believe students should incorporate this technology into their education, as well as how to be safe while using it. One of these standards for students is to be an 'empowered learner'. This empowerment for students should come from allowing them to choose the technology that they want to use in order to complete a specific activity. Another standard for students is to be a 'digital citizen' and ensure that they are being responsible and safe online, as well as obeying all internet laws. An example of these standards would be to allow students in a Human Anatomy class to visit other teachers in the building as a "scavenger hunt" and take photos of certain body parts on these teachers and post them to a social media of their choice. This would allow the students to choose where to share their educational experience, as well as how to ask others for others' permission to take their image and post it online.
In general, if you don't know how you should incorporate technology into your classroom, consult with your students or the internet itself. Chances are, you'll learn about something new that could aid your students tremendously. If you wish to learn more about ISTE and their standards for students, clicking the image below will take you to their website. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has derived standards for educators and teachers to incorporate into their classrooms as well as their lives. As a future teacher in the sciences, I believe it is extremely important for me to continue learning not only about technology and education, but about the fields I am teaching in because new things are constantly being discovered and/or developed. In my classroom, I hope to work alongside fellow educators to create fun instructional videos where the students can learn about a certain topic from us and they can see how to safely and effectively collaborate with others to accomplish a task. To demonstrate internet citizenship, I would ensure that these videos were free from anything illegal and upload them to an online service such as YouTube so that students could rewatch the videos whenever they needed or even if they were absent from class that day. As many teachers do today, I will collect data from students such as quiz and exam grades and analyze them in order to determine which teaching techniques used seemed to be the most beneficial for each individual class. Clicking the image below will take you to the ISTE page if you wish to learn more from them directly about these standards for educators.
In my lifetime, I have witnessed an exponential increase of technology usage in the classroom over time. In elementary school, I remember traveling as a class to the computer lab to begin learning how to make a slideshow presentation or brochures about certain topics. In middle school, I remember having carts of laptops in almost all of my classrooms and we would use them for certain things, but not all of the time. In high school, each student was given a Chromebook and told to keep it for their four years as it would be needed in each and every class (which it was). As a current sophomore in college, I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I have no idea how college would function without current technology such as laptops or smart phones. In recent years, technology has become so heavily used in classrooms that students (including myself) wouldn't know how to learn without its help. The image below shows certain technologies, social media platforms, and applications that have developed over and how long it took for each of them to be adopted by a large portion of the population. As you can see, this adoption time has decreased over time alongside the increase of technology usage through the years.
Web 3.0 refers to the third stage of development for the World Wide Web (WWW) that is currently in development. This stage is meant to provide a greater focus on machine-based understanding of data in order to create a more intelligent, connected, and open web. Some refer to this stage as a 'digital universe' where the majority of the world and its activities are completed through the usage of technology. Over the years, we have seen an increase for students to earn degrees online anywhere from an Associate's Degree to a Doctorate, as well as allowed students at the middle school and high school levels to take classes that interest them while fulfilling their educational requirements.
The Gretzky Principle is defined as is one that says that individuals should focus on mastering skills and topics that they are skilled at or that they truly enjoy while acknowledging their weaknesses along the way. I believe that K-12 students in America should begin using more technologies from the Web 3.0 era while adapting a version of the Gretzky Principle in their studies. This would allow students to become proficient in a specific field (as we already do through colleges and universities) in order to make a larger impact on the world around them. On of the critical issues with technology outlined in Chapter 6 of Technology Applications for the Digital Classroom is the interaction between students and teachers online, especially involving social media platforms (Issue #7). This issue is presented in a point/counterpoint style within the chapter, and I am inclined to agree that students should not be able to be friends with their teachers online. If they were able to be friends online, it would blur the lines between both the teacher's and the student's personal and professional lives. Seeing a student while grocery shopping and stopping to speak with them for a moment is completely different than being friends with them online where they can see every aspect of your life, as you can see theirs. Many individuals and government bodies have begun to discuss the implementation of policies that clearly define guidelines regarding student and educator interaction online as seen in the image below from a CNN News broadcast.
One of the critical issues with technology outlined in Chapter 6 of Technology Applications for the Digital Classroom is the usage of digital/online textbooks and homework programs (Issue #16). This issue is presented in a point/counterpoint style within the chapter, and I believe that they should not be a part of a student's education as there are so many issues that can come along with the usage of them. One of the largest issues of course, is the student's ability to access the internet from home or the reliability of the internet at home if they have it. As a student, I have used many of these programs and I feel as though more time is spent between classmates trying to learn and understand how the specific textbook or program works instead of spending time reading, completing work, or studying. Another issue with these online forms of textbooks is that the technological support from each company varies drastically and some are well known for being unreliable and of no help to the students. For these reasons and more, at least for now, I believe that digital textbooks should be kept out of today's classrooms.
In Chapter 9 of Technology Applications for the Digital Classroom, the topic of literacy and reading in classrooms is discussed. One thing that I noticed particularly in this chapter was how to be inclusive towards students who speak English as their second language (ESL students). These students could use online academic search engines such as Google Scholar, OMIM, JSTOR, or PubMed in order to gain primary source documents for certain projects or assignments within the classroom in their primary language. This would allow them to come to class better prepared so that they aren't struggling to understand the concepts or assignment as much because it is primarily in English. The image below shows different search engines and surrounds the academic search engines that can be used to find primary source documentation in red. The ones I have listed above are the ones that I have used extensively throughout my studies and find extremely useful.
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