A Look Back, A Look Ahead

Seven week ago I stared at an empty document screen and tried to analyze my entire relationship with technology. Letting moving pictures augment my proverbial word count, I eloquently summed things up thusly:

Image Source: Tenor

Since then I've been challenged to look at what I recognize as technology, assessed growing classroom use, voiced my moral hang ups about letting technological progress control our economic future, and explored how I could find support for myself and my students in the digital world.

Less than two month is simply not enough time to have changed my technological perspective. I still resent my own overreliance on my devices. If anything, being exposed to so much new information in such a short time has magnified the feeling that technology is overwhelming. My hope it that I will be able to return to the materials I've been speed reading and time and experience will have let these seeds take root and start growing new appreciation. I've experienced this before professionally- the first time someone suggests switching to using positive language while your class of 3 year olds is constantly imploding it feels like an additional demand instead of a beneficial mentality and classroom. management shift.

Educator Bailey Cavender shares similar thoughts in this post for The Educator's Room: "There was just so much being thrown at me, and not enough time to process it all. There was no shortage of strategies that I wanted to try in my own classroom, but halfway through that last day, nothing was sticking. My brain was struggling to keep up, and I felt overwhelmed." More educators share how PD can be successfully implemented to prevent feeling overwhelmed in this discussion.

Advice against teacher burnout often include platitudes like "work smarter, not harder", which I know it theoretically something technology tools are designed to help with. As much as I balked at AI lesson planning (and AI use in general), I am not currently responsible for writing out my own lesson plans. One thing that also comes up frequently as a tool for educators to maintain their own mental health is getting support from your Professional Learning Network (PLN). I've written here about PLNs, but my explorations have been more detached. I have actually put a lot of effort into my in-person PLN in the past year and made it a professional goal to establish more networking contacts in my building, but I have not yet really dug into the online options. My transitional career state makes me feel more apprehensive about pursuing internet contacts where I cannot rely on my face to face conversation and performance skills.

So I'm getting there. As a bonus, my search algorithms are all to happy to suggest edtech content (along with wedding planning tips and stories about book banning). So I'll leave you with this clip from one my favorite cyberpunk fictions, Johnny Mnemonic:

Image Source: Tenor

PLNs- Learning for Educators

Learning for Educators

Professional Development or PD is part of an educator's job description. This is not a fanciful phrasing, it's often literally written into job descriptions or contracts. Educators are expected to have a passion for learning and to devote a discrete amount of time annually to learning new techniques or skills that can be applied to their classrooms or educational environments.
Traditional PD tends to be scheduled from the top-down, with institutions devoting student days off to tell staff about new policies or providing reading materials summarizing new studies. One-size-fits-all lecture methods don't sound very much like it fits with the active learning strategies I recently wrote about on this blog; if we know that students aren't empty vessels into which teachers pour knowledge, why would we expect professional to be any different? 
Looking for innovative solutions to PD limitations and challenges, some studies (like this one) look at the power of the Professional Learning Network or PLN to give educators the way to maintain their identities as lifelong learners and continue to grow and refine their professional techniques.

Image Source: Tenor

What is a PLN?

PLN stands for Professional Learning Network or Personal Learning Network. The two are often used interchangeably, but the technical difference is right there in the name: "Professional" is for an individual's professional growth while "Personal" might be, but can also expand to extracurricular interests. We will largely be talking about Professional Learning Networks, but you will see how they cross over.
Put simply, a Professional Learning Network is a set of relationships and connections where professionals can learn from each other, exchanging contacts, information, feedback, and insights. The network relationships are based on reciprocity and mutual respect that all members have ways to grow and valuable perspectives to share. PLNs are not new, but the increased level of global connectivity due to modern technology has led to new ways to connect outside of one's immediate community. PLNs are not exclusive to the education field, but the fields commitment to PD has made them a robust part of modern educators' career planning. 

This self-paced course from The Teacher Challenge is a great way to learn more.

While building a PLN can seem like just another thing educators have to add to their overstuffed plates, data supports that a good PLN provides holistic support to educators. In this 2016 survey of teachers responses showed that PLNs helped multifaceted personal growth, helped teachers try new teaching techniques, productively changed teachers thought patterns, and increased student performance. The benefits spread out to the larger community; sharing within a PLN is sometimes called "knowledge mobilization" and this article looks at how it is key to a useful PLN.

P for Professional, P for Personal

One of the best part of PLNs is the ways they address the broad, complex needs of educators. Learning "how to build a PLN" initially felt to me like an impersonal, grind-heavy to-do checklist. Sure, it was beneficial, but could it work for everyone? My turning point came when looking at this study which had different teachers explore their own PLNs and learning goals. The participants were asked to respond to prompts in a semi-structured interview and also to sketch a mental map representation of their PLN. Below are some of their visualizations (with some details blurred to protect confidentiality).

Image Source: Science Direct

Image Source: Science Direct

Image Source: Science Direct

Image Source: Science Direct

Image Source: Science Direct

Clearly we are not looking at one homogenous system, but instead a groundwork upon which different professionals can address their own needs and create their own network style. Participants defined themselves as the Constant Explorer, the People Person, the Pioneering Change Agent, the Global Connetictivist, and the Rural Networker. They all experienced professional learning opportunities across public, personal, and pedagogical arenas but with a focus on their specific goals and using different tools or the same tools in different ways. Their Professional Experience was Personalized.

Growing Your Own Network

One of my favorite metaphors for a PLN comes from this Oklahoma State University article where author Cathy Green describes a PLN as a garden that needs tending. With that in mind, I created this visual aid for growing your own network.

Image Source: Blog Author via Canva

As I mentioned above, there are many great lists of steps or tips for growing your PLN, but a key part of using them yourself is to guide yourself by defining your own goals. This list from Digital Promise suggests creating an "elevator sentence" for yourself to refine who you are and what you are interested in. Knowing this can help you see which PLN connections are right for you.

The most immediate PLN connections are sometimes available in person. If you are part of a school community, there may be opportunities right there to share experiences and divvy up keeping up with new research and technology, sharing the most pertinent information with your group instead of reading and learning every thing yourself. 
But the best PLNs are diversified and digital connectivity helps with this process. This set of tips from EdSurge reminds us that your PLN doesn't have to be only other educators; students, parents, and community activists have valuable information to share. EdSurge's list also reminds educators buildign a PLN to look out for whose voices they aren't hearing and who isn't being represented in the conversation.

PLN growth online has a few avenues: informal education based, formal education based, and social networking. Informal education options could include blogs, education site community forums, YouTube videos, or listservs. Formal Education options might be digital conferences, online courses, or moderated discussions with industry experts. Social options might include Facebook groups, X conversations, LinkedIn, or Instagram profiles. All of these online options are subject to change over time: Twitter has historically been an excellent place to engage in live conversations, but the platform has been undergoing significant cultural changes in its shift to X.com.
One of my favorite ways to explore new potential network contacts is through the research strategy "pearl growing", which you can read more about through this link. Looking at the sources your sources follow or the tags they use frequently is a great way to target your search for your next network link.

If all of this reading is starting to overwhelm you, consider this video a great review that will take less than 5 minutes of your time.

Some of the best suggestion sources, like this link from Edutopia acknowledge that it can be intimidating to start developing a PLN! Growing one takes work, self-reflection, and must be done wit intention. However the benefits are undeniable not just for professional growth, but for personal support. These networks are about more than a web of connections, but instead are a community ready to help support each other and recognize and value each other's expertise. Value and invest in yourself with your own, personalized Professional Learning Network and feed your inner student.

Accessing Technology, Technological Aids for Accessibility

Accessibly Design

There is an amazing back and forth pull between technological advancements and technology aids for accessibility. The same technology advancements that help connect many people (a telephone, and email, a text, a video call) can leave a noticeable lack of access for others (being unable to hear audio communication clearly, easily, or at all; being unable to read visual messaging; losing body language or verbal tone signals).
Luckily technology is also constantly developed to overcome access challenges like new mobility aids, screen readers, communication pads.

Rather than having these two circumstances constantly playing catch-up with one another, many tech companies might try to word with an anticipate the needs of marginalized communities; working with disability advocates and disabled designers to build features in natively to technology that adapts it to meet the needs of broader populations.

This is especially important in the classroom where students are owed fair access to a quality education. Within a technology-integrated classroom, if some students are not able to take advantage of that digital access because of the shortcomings of the technology, their rights as learners are compromised.

Accessibility tools being available is step one, but the next step is making sure educators, students, and general users know about these tools. Below is an example of some accessibility settings and tools available on a major piece of technology my students use in the classroom, the iPad.

*Disclaimer* I am not deaf/ hard of hearing or a member of the Deaf community. The best information about a community comes from members of that community and there are links to additional content creators and resources below.

Audio Accessibility on the iPad

Image Source: Blog Author via Canva

Why Audio Accessibility?

Tools and settings for the deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) have many potential users. This quick statistics check-in from the Nation Institute of Health points out that 2 to 3 of every 1,00 children born in the US have hearing loss in one of both ears and 1 in 8 people in the US age 12 and older has some measurable amount of hearing loss.
This issue is often simplified to the dichotomy of deaf versus hearing, but the HoH community is vast and varied in age and other demographics as well as the levels and type of hearing loss.

On a personal note, like so many folks, I only started paying attention to the complexities of hearing loss when it struck close to home. Thanks to a tumor, my sister started experiencing profound hear loss in middle school and had the inner bones of her left ear removed during high school, completely removing her ability to hear on that side. Because of this, I've learned a lot from her about the difficulties of living in a world that expects full auditory ability. One of the specific challenges is the loss of her audio "depth perception" as she calls it, or the problems distinguishing between foreground and background noise. This is a common issue for folks with hearing loss (and auditory processing difficulty!) and you can read more about it here. If you've ever existed in a group schooling environment before, it's not a big leap to see why this comes up for students trying to focus or listen to instruction.

A Deeper Dive into the Tools

The first two highlighted features are ones I look for on every device I own, due in large part to the personal experiences described above. Mono audio and balance are both about adjusting how much audio comes out of which channel; which can either be totally inconsequential or extremely important depending on the content of the audio. Even as a person with no substantial hearing loss, I have used these setting to accommodate for broken headphones or confusing track mixing. The fact that this setting's existence helps both hearing and deaf/HoH populations indicates it is a success as far as Universal Design is concerned. Learn more about universal design by clicking on this link!

Captioning and Subtitling are perhaps the most commonly thought of accommodations for deaf/HoH tech users. It is important to note they are not actually the same thing (learn more here) and captioning is the preferred accommodation as it includes sound descriptions, providing more information. Many video streaming sources have some forms of native captioning, so the iPads captioning function is designed to work with compatible applications rather than any video that plays. The live captions are the really lovely feature here, using sound recognition to generate spontaneous captions for video calls or recordings. A student could record a lecture to re-play later and have captions added to increase comprehension and access. Obviously these captions are not created professionally and are prone to error; they are also only available for my students' iPads in English. Another helpful part of these settings is the ability to customize caption style (font, size, color, etc.), making the captioning work better for the individual using it.

Sound recognition is a great feature for allowing the iPad to take some of the concentration burden off of a HoH student or making a learning spaces safer and more inclusive for a deaf student. Turning on this feature has the iPad "listening" for specific sounds like alarms and notifying users when that sound occurs. This could be additional notification for something like a fire alarm. It could also be notification that a teacher's timer is going off, something my class uses to know it is time to start clean up procedures.

Device integration is one of the most exciting features, but not one I personally experienced because I do not use hearing aids. Instead I'll link you to this piece about actual user Klaus Wirtz's experience with this feature and his iPhone. This feature is a case where there are multiple devices being rapidly developed and redesigned, so there is a lot of area for growth and interfacing in this arena.

The final feature is one that might be useful for deaf/HoH users to engage, but is also important for other users to employ when communicating digitally with their deaf/HoH peers. Adding voice isolation cuts back on distracting background noise, allowing the people you are video or audio calling with to focus only on your words and not providing audio interference for live captioning systems.

Looking to Do More in Your Classroom?

For large scale information, check out the National Association of the Deaf.

To learn more about making accessible spaces for the d/Deaf community, check out InclusionHub.

Thinking about how to build a more inclusive classroom? So is this case study from Educating All Learners.

Want to read some nuanced, informed takes from deaf/HoH academics? Look at The Mind Hears blog.

Interested in some video learning? Look for Ahmed Khalifa on YouTube or at his website.

Image Source: Giphy

It's a Beautiful Day in the Digital Neighborhood

Our Places in the Digital Plane

At the turn of the century, folks could tell things were changing. The internet has survived the Y2K scare and now faced educating new generations who were growing up in an era of rapid technological advancement. It's within this context of educating these growing would-be techies that Mark Prensky first introduced the vernacular of "Digital Natives" and "Digital Immigrants". 

Are you from around here?

Image Source: Wikipedia

It was 2001 when he first published this article explaining that for individuals born in the 1980s and later, digital technology was a part of their upbringing. In this was they were "native" to the modern world; generations before were "immigrants" who were learning the ways of computers and cellular phones after building a foundation in something different. While this terminology proved useful to exploring the shifts in how different groups interacted with technology, it also cast a wide net. Clumsy assumptions about who individually falls into which group based only on the broadest terminology can be especially difficult for youth of lower socioeconomic status as discussed here.

Will you be staying long?

In 2011, partially as a response to the flattening of the native and immigrant archetypes and the continued movement to digital integration, David White and Alison Le Cornu proposed a new typology for qualifying online existence: the visitor to resident spectrum. If you've only got a minute to catch up with these ends of the spectrum, you can check out this quick video by Leigh Ravenhill:

Video Source: Leigh Ravenhill on YouTube

If you prefer to read all about it, the core of the split is about how users interact with digitals tools and services. A visitor has a task they need to complete and will use the internet as a tool to get it done. A resident has gone online to find other individuals or a community to connect to or interact with. 
One of the most useful parts of this schema is it acknowledges the changeable nature of behavior: just as you could visit a place and decide eventually to move there for work, a user might find a platform they use to find answers to specific questions and then eventually become part of that platform's community, transferring from visitor to resident. Similarly a user of a social media network might go from daily post and check-ins to clicking over once every few months when they get a notification, much like a college student stopping back in to their old high school for a visit.
There is also the acknowledgement that an individual's online presence is not universal and may vary between systems and aspects of their life.
To help folks explore their own digital identity, White created this mapping exercise with open access tools to help individuals or groups compare their presence along the visitor to resident spectrum when considering the personal and industrial aspects of their lives.

My Map

Following the basics of the exercises linked to above, I created my own digital map below.

Image created by blog author

My Methods

• The represented programs and services are a snapshot of things I've accessed in the past two weeks. Some are newer habits and some a reflective of the time of year (back to school season and family travel)
• I specifically included programs or services where it was possible to be more of a resident or take part in a community. My tuning app sees regular use is not trying to get me to connect with friends or post anything.
• My professional axis is determined by two arenas- my teaching job and my graduate school workload.
• Square icons represent programs primarily accessed by a phone app whereas written out logos indicate much of my usage occurs through an internet browser. I labeled the app icons to make them more accessible to folks who are less familiar with any specific apps or at least this iteration of them.  You can read some interesting thoughts on app logo designs and redesigns here.
• Honorable mentions go to X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, and the Penny Arcade Forums. These were a strange thing to think about because I use them through an intermediary; in some cases I've been consuming content through them for many years, but it's always over my partner's shoulder. I know things I've suggested to them have been posted in these spaces, but there is still a notable distance, turning me into what I might call a tourist. This is opposed to tumblr, a service I am on the furthest end of the visitor spectrum with where I don't even have an account, but I still actively access it myself.

My Notes

I was pleased to see the gap between my personal and professional digital life as this is currently by design. Even for services that cross the divide I have built strong boundaries. For example, I use Gmail consistently for personal use, but I do not put my work email on my personal phone and rarely access it on my laptop despite Google Workspace being the heavily utilized at work. 
Similarly I put Google Drive on here an additional time to specifically note the Google account I share with my partner that we have been co-using for wedding planning.

I generally resist getting an app exclusively for shopping. The one notable exception to this is the app for my current grocery store which I use weekly to slowly build cash off deals. While it is most certainly collecting information about my habits, I don't use it for writing shopping lists or grocery planning and have almost never accessed it except for that weekly scan.

It was an interest trip through the past few years seeing which apps are no longer in the rotation. It makes sense that I am not firing up Kast currently, but during Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 it was seeing heavy use for group movie nights. I have fooled myself into thinking I will become meticulously organized with the right calendar system, only to abandon it for a paper planner weeks later.

Overall there is an interested distinction that exists for me when I compare my own internet residency to that of peers and see that where I am residing for connection, it is to maintain connections built originally through in person interactions. Facebook has little use to me anymore except for being the best way for my friends and I to share events. When a program wants me to "find friends", I have very specific parameters I set up for each service. This contrasts with the many folks I know who have joined communities where they knew some or even none of the contributors or who make a point to follow and then interact with creators. I will subscribe to a few YouTube channels, but you'll never catch me in the comments and I don't think I've ever sent a direct message (DM) through something like Instagram without having already talked to that individual first. I wondered as I mapped what my map would look like laid atop another users and where the scales of our axis's would align. 

My Machine & Me

Sometimes when I start to feel awash in the sea of new technology, I need to ground myself by remembering that I’ve enjoyed technology my whole life. Sometimes we find ourselves already on the other side of the biggest discoveries and living instead through the refinements and tweaks that came about. No one reading this was around pre-printing press or even before the typewriter revolutionized the printed word. My lifetime has seen great leaps in digital printing, but I still grew up with the printed word everywhere. (For a diversion from the main point, you can check out the history of printers at this link or this one).

Some History- Of Sewing Machines  and the Author

But I live in one of the growing numbers of American households without a printer of my own (like some of the folks in this article). What I do have is a sewing machine.

Sewing machines were a cornerstone of the industrial revolution which you can read more about here. Connecting that history to the modern sewing machine is something you can read about here. My grandmothers both owned sewing machines and my mother used hers to make my siblings and me every year’s Halloween costumes. As a preteen I learned to operate one myself and worked together with my mother to make my senior prom outfit. I also learned hand sewing and embroidery and those were the skills I brought to college when I left home and my mother’s classic Singer machine behind.

Cut to Christmas morning a few years later and I’m unwrapping my Brother CS600i.

Image property of author

While still a beginner and budget friendly tool, this beauty was my first taste of a computerized sewing machine, with 60 programmable stitches. This has routinely proved beneficial as I tend to sew in bursts and then need to shelve the machine for a few months, so having clearly labeled, automatically set up options lets me dive back into more complicated projects right away.  There are many places you could go to get fantastic analyses of the quality of different machines like this article from Real Simple, this article from The Spruce, or this roundup from TechGearLab. But having the best machine has not been as important to me as simply having one.

Why This Tech Matters to Me

As I said above, I tend to sew in fits and starts, specifically because I’ve often used sewing to make personalized gifts for those I love. I started sewing regularly when my niblings were born and I created gifts for them to work through my guilt over being far away from them as they grew up. I also frequently craft costumes which started in my days in theater and have expanded out into making things for my partner and I as we celebrate our annual Halloween traditions, which have become a cornerstone of our memories together. It’s important for me to connect these feelings to my machine and recognize it as modern technology that makes those tasks easier and more enjoyable, giving me leeway to make mistakes and take greater chances. And sometimes I still forget about how far along my machine is in terms of modern tech incorporation just because it doesn’t have a touch screen. I used a borrowed 1960s machine about a year ago while my machine was being tuned and the differences were stark; I am so glad the project I was working on didn’t need a button hole or my timeline would have doubled. On my machine I plug in the number, put on the foot and attachments indicated and the machine guides me through the process.

Here are some of my sewing creations

All images in this slideshow are property of the author

Sewing the Future

Looking ahead, while I'm still very happy with my machine, it’s actually a device that I would consider upgrading before I’m forced to due to circumstance. This is usually not my style; I lived with my last phone having a broken camera lens for 14 months and taking photos is one of my favorite uses of my phone! But the gradual pacing of advancements with sewing machine technology makes it both exciting and comfortable to picture what I could do with a step up. I was recently able to play with a bernadette 38 whose info is here and I was absolutely thrilled by the options.  It’s a common crafter phenomenon to buy more tools than you have time for, so I’m not putting anything in my cart yet, but if the pattern scraps in my living room have anything to say about it, I’ll have my foot on a new pedal soon…

The bernadette 38
Image source: BerninaUSA

Finding "High Quality" Technological Integration- Evaluating Teaching With Tech

The data (and meta analysis of that data) is in: effective use of technology can better learning outcomes for students. You can read more about technologically supporting at-risk students by clicking this link or explore a literature review from the Nation Institute of Health regarding the use of information and communication technology in education at this link.
The positive reviews come with qualifiers about what kinds of programming provide positive results and actually support student achievement. So how is an educator to make sure their class's iPad time is actually stimulating learning or their Kahoot! session isn't just killing time? Let's dive into a great tool for lesson plan reflection and challenging program assumptions.

The Triple E Framework

The Triple E Framework is designed to help educators measure technology integration in their lessons along three prongs: engagement, enhancement, and extension. Created by Dr. Elizabeth Keren-Kolb of the University of Michigan's Marsal Family School of Education, the Triple E Framework aims to give K-12 educators guidance on how to integrate technology into their classrooms in research supported ways to support student learning goals. More information about the framework and a wealth of open source resources can be found at this link, but I'll also walk you through some more information here. 

Let's look at the first "E" in the trio: Engagement

Image Source: tripleeframework.com

The goal with the engagement is to check if the use of a technology tool is promoting genuine focus on the task(s) at hand, encouraging self-motivation and an active role in learning. A student can seem "engaged" with a program because they are looking at and interacting with it, but if they are actually trying to rush through an activity to reach the point where they can change their avatar, the program is actually distracting them from their learning rather than empowering them. Another goal of actual engagement is fostering social interaction through co-use of an edtech program, allowing students to share the learning process with their peers and mentors.

An Engaged lesson might look like:

• Pairs or teams of students co-using devices to collaborate on assignments
• Working digitally with other classes using shared tools to instantly update group work
• Working on a coding assignment where the results are the reward
• Having students write and edit questions for gamified review, investing them in the learning goals
• An educator providing specific goals to help students focus while interacting with potentially distracting programs

The second "E" is Enhancement

Image Source: tripleeframework.com

Enhancement looks to see what the use of technology can bring to a lesson or activity that would not be possible without that tech. Rather than using an app to practice and review previously covered skills, can an app help students deepen their understanding of a concept and apply it in new ways? Enhanced edtech usage follows modern educator practices by providing scaffolding for learners, customizing the amount of support they individually need and connecting with that earlier step by engaging them in their zone of proximal development (you can find more information on the zone of proximal development by clicking this link).

An Enhanced lesson might:

• Have students explore sources in highly visual (virtual reality, image galleries, interactive maps) or auditory ways (recorded lectures, videos, or music; sound mixing tools)
• Use genuine student discovered sources instead of teacher-produced examples to ground exercises in actual circumstances
• Provide many online sourcing options and ask students to use critical thinking to select the best ones for the project at hand
• Allow students to present their work in multi media formats, stretching their creativity and demonstrating what they are learning beyond using only words
• Differentiate software features to support and challenge students as individual learners 

The final "E" we'll look at is Extension

Image Source: tripleeframework.com

Extension in this framework is all about connection: keeping students connected to their learning outside of the classroom, connecting their lesson to their everyday lives, and connecting the skills they are building to skills they can use today and in the future.

An Extended lesson might:

• Use apps that are available in school and virtually so students can work at their own pace
• Teach digital citizenship guidelines and draw connections between different types of online interactions
• Connect students with individuals with different backgrounds through video or text so they can share their perspectives and life experiences
• Have students take photos of things in their life that connect to the lesson goals and share those photos with their class 

Helping educators apply the Triple E Framework is a rubric for assessing lesson plans (available in digital form here or in a printable PDF version here) guided by each of the three E's. With three categories under each subsection, scoring becomes an easy matter of adding together between 0 and 18 points. A lesson that is very likely integrating technology to meet learning goals will score 13-18,  lesson that might be missing a key integration category scores a 7-12, and a lesson that is not adequately integrating technology in service of lesson goals scores a 6 or below. A strong focus is also placed on how good pedagogical practices can make adequate tools good and good tools great, offering suggestions of instructional strategies that can grow engagement, enhancement, and extension. Overall the Triple E Framework is dedicated to living up to its slogan: "Learning First, Technology Second".

Evaluating My Own Lessons

When I started my career in education, I worked with some of the youngest learners for whom technology use often boils down to "screen time", something which is heavily frowned upon in day care and preschool setting; the most recent guidelines as of Autumn 2023 from Illinois Department of Children and Family Services regarding day cares are found on page 44 of this PDF link. There is growing recognition that not all time in front of screens is created equally, but I have encountered many family who are squeamish about their young child's time with technology.

Currently my first graders get most of their explicit technology integration twice weekly in the school's excellent project-based library classes; a quick overview of projects they've done in this program in past years in reference to the Triple E rubric leads me to conclude most projects would easily be scoring 15-18. However in my own room our use of technology is considerably more limited. While I mostly consider this age appropriate given our curriculum's overall goal; looking at my own scores on the rubric makes it clear that there are often times when technology is not so much integrated as deployed for teacher convenience.

For examples, one of the regular times my students use their school issued iPads is during our weekly "book shopping" period. my teaching partner and I pull a few students at a time to refresh their individual book bags with 8-10 new books and the rest of the class plays on a reading app called Raz-Kids. This activity is solitary and while it seemingly engages may students, their eagerness to go to the "Star Zone" for prizes at the end of the time belies where the gamification fails to actually promote connection. Overall this use of technology would score around a 4 on the Triple E rubric and I am definitely considering trying to wean off of our reliance on this time.

However one of the things I love about this framework is that analysis is for a single activity and not a condemnation of my class's entire process. When looking at another activity we've done in past years with a pattern blocks application, that lesson plan scores an 11. While that is not a top tier score, it does show that a range of integration already exists and by pinpointing the more successful aspects (this app lets students expand beyond the physical materials we have in the room, there is a co-working element, the program is taught explicitly with an "I do, we do, you do" structure), I can see not only the room for improvement, but what is working in the class that could be spread to other programs. 

The teaching strategies connection in this framework is also particularly helpful to my growth as an educator. Because of my role in my school, I am often not at liberty to make decisions about what programs my students will be using, so finding better ways to integrate the ones we have is extremely valuable for me. This back to school season it's time to learn something new.

Image Source: Tenor

Wait, why are you starting a tech blog in 2024?

Hey, it's A. I work with first graders in a private school in Chicago. I’ve just started my third year with this age group. Previously I worked in early childhood education (ECE) leading classes of 3-5 year olds. My time with young learners reconnected me to my love of libraries as I went week after week to switch out armfuls as the unit themes changed. I have always been a voracious reader and consumer of stories- through theater, song, and great conversation. Years after my parents started the habit, I will sometimes ask my partner to read aloud to me after a particularly rough day. The last few days of summer were punctuated with lovely café reading breaks as I tried to up my book count before getting back to the busy season.

Image property of the author

I adore sharing my passion for stories and knowledge with children and I’ve been working on transitioning my career from the classroom to the school library to be a steward of stories and leader in the love of learning.

But a library takes on different forms for today’s children than it did for me. I know that the core mission is still the same: community service and connection to knowledge, but knowledge is found in different places and communities have evolving needs. The modern library is a technologically adept and adaptable place and I’ve got my work cut out for me getting myself ready to be an expert there.

Me + Technology =...

My niece just got her first cell phone and can (and will!) text me independently. I downloaded Duolingo and friended her to motivate her to practice Spanish. Her parents are not the greatest at communicating regularly and she lives 700+ miles away. This connection opportunity is beautiful and valuable and only possible with my use of technology.

So I’ll be curmudgeonly about it, but I cannot deny I use technology regularly and it gives me the ability to do things I otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. But I am slow to adapt and often fine making do with what I have for as long as it possibly works. I would never be able to have a piano in my apartment, but my 20 year old keyboard works fine. I am diabetic and can easily check my glucose level daily, but balk at the idea of continual monitoring or keeping self-analyzing digital records. I feel myself becoming my father in Best Buy scowling at the employees at the service desk whenever I have to ask my partner for help with the computer they reformatted for me… because I needed one for grad school and didn’t want to spend the money on a new one.

Image source: Tenor

The place where the grumpy persona switches to real concern is when I consider my fractured digital self. Due to family circumstances I missed a major period in my peers' lives when they first explored forming and reforming themselves online in chat rooms and message boards. I have never felt like I created a proper digital persona but I also feel profoundly unsafe being my authentic self on digital platforms. The threat of permanency juxtaposed with the effusive nature of disappearing resources leaves me nervous. I engage with a few social platforms as a holdover from younger days or a superficial way to share with a select family and friends.
I’ve still managed to work many places where I know a shortcut or a process that my coworkers don’t somehow, so I know realistically I’m more to the middle of the pack than I sometimes feel as I drag myself along. Working as a teacher I put a lot of stock into the idea folks learn and process differently, so I know that my preference for pen and paper notes is one part comfort, but also might just be my style and what works for my brain.

My Worldview Concerning Modern Technology

I’ve often self-identified as somewhat of a Luddite, but in the historical sense rather than the colloquial meaning which would just identify me as someone opposed to new technology. The Luddites were members of 19th century labor activism famous for smashing textile production machines to protest working conditions, devaluation of their labor, and inferior product output. The ire of Luddites was never about the machines themselves, but rather the way in which their usage was exploited to disenfranchise tradespersons. You can learn some more about the Luddites on this Wikipedia page or (if you were taught as I was in high school to never accept Wikipedia as a reliable source) read this article from Smithsonian Magazine.

Technology is a neutral tool, but its use exists within systems that perpetuate oppression and inequality. Fear over technological unemployment (loss of human jobs to technology) is frequently dismissed, but we can look at the latest waves of the ethical and economic questions concerning AI to see that the concerns are ever evolving. Big profit potentials are tied up in technological development and with big profits comes big denial of responsibility.
As technological advancements make the world more accessible, we are also building a world less accessible without technology access. A mobile phone is not a luxurious item for many people but a necessary tool to find and keep employment, receive timely medical care, or access services. There is often a form of luxury or privilege present when someone chooses to unplug because of the social expectations and infrastructure built; if one of my student’s parents/guardians and emergency contacts couldn’t be reached by phone it could easily become a serious situation whether or not that family personally desired constant connectability.

It may be easy to read this and feel like I’m taking on too much gloom and doom, but for me what it boils down to is caution and conscience. A global community has a lot of conflicting needs and desires and we have to find our way through one click at a time.

Image Source: Pxhere