What is your philosophy regarding the role of technology in your teaching? How is that reflected in what you and your students do with technology in your classroom?
I have had the pleasure of working with technology in my classroom since around 2011. During the 2007-2014 timeframe, I worked in a Title 1 school where my principal used our funds to enhance our blended learning program. I was grateful to have had very early training in effective use of technology in the classroom. With our funds, we were able to have a full set of laptops per grade-level that we shared among our team, interactive Promethean boards, and hand-held devices for all student response. This was a very exciting time for me as a math teacher and also a time of growth. We still had an old fashioned computer lab at school; however, the students had opportunities to work collaboratively on projects using the laptops! Our lessons were also more engaging due to the interactive capabilities of the Promethean boards and student response devices!
After my time at this school, I was able to be a part of the opening of a new school that become one of my county’s “Lighthouse” schools which included devices for each student and interactive boards. Our school also had a Tech Lead Teacher who assisted in Professional Development for the staff on how to use the technology using a blended learning model with higher-level tasks beyond just SAMR’s Substitution and Augmentation levels and more at the Modification and Redefinition levels. It was during this 2014-2018 timeframe that I really started to perfect my use of technology in the classroom. My prior experience was very much an introduction to the capabilities of technology in the classroom; however, this experience really sharpened my skills as a blended learning teacher.
At the present time, I teach math fully online and rely on technology everyday; however, my experiences of using technology in the physical classroom has helped me to be a better online instructor. My philosophy of technology in the classroom has always been focused on blended instruction where the technology becomes a natural part of the classroom and lessons and is used authentically as the situation requires it. For example, when I taught in the physical classroom, my 5th grade ELA students would blog about their novels. Each chapter, they had to summarize their reflections and respond to others in the classroom. This was one of my first experiences with a SAMR Transformation level task. Due to privacy issues, we could not make these public outside of our grade-level but students within our school could interact and respond. The students were so engaged in this process.
Now, as a fully online teacher of math, I use Desmos often to replace the physical textbook daily which is a necessity for my classroom environment; however, we use shared Google docs to create projects and work together in breakout groups. We utilize Schoology discussion posts to communicate in a variety of ways and we even have a private Flip Group that is used within our courses. Students can create math tutorials and video summaries of lessons which is really fun and engaging. However, we still take physical paper notes in our journals and complete practice problems in our workbooks. Students love the flexibility of having the choice how to complete and submit their work. Some students take pictures and upload, some students work on a Google doc, some students submit using ASSISTments (our online math practice platform).
Currently, I am delving into the world of AI instruction using ChatGPT. Since I teach students in middle school, I am very much aware that they are going to use this technology. I have been working on ways to model best practices with this platform and instruct them on appropriate uses of this new technology. ChatGPT has the potential to help students in many ways but it can also be used inappropriately if students are not instructed on how to use it.
Technology has been an active part of my classroom instruction for over 10 years now and I have grown so much in my philosophy of technology instruction. I feel it is irreplaceable and I cannot image teaching without the technology. However, I think that it is important to remember the balance of tech vs no tech and always remind yourself as an instructor, how does this technology usage enhance the learning experience for my students!
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