Digital literacy is an absolutely essential element of 21st century education. The landscape of the professional world is shifting more and more away from rote memorization of crucial information and moving towards problem solving and collaboration. We have also seen exponential and explosive growth in technology over the last two decades. To ignore technology in the classroom and, more importantly, its authentic use in problem solving is grossly irresponsible as modern educators. However, the Common Core in and of itself is weighty enough to fill an entire school year. Add in state and district testing and time becomes pinched. Add in the normal disturbances of a public school such as fire drills or visits from counselors and teachers begin to get concerned. Then, factor in the need remediation and re-teaching, community building activities, and a desire to make your classroom authentic and engaging and teachers begin to panic about covering everything. Then consider the seemingly inevitable delays of education. A few years ago, my district suffered an earthquake that largely disrupted our first month of school. This last year we adopted a new Learning Management System and had a rocky transition into the new year. Power outages happen. Sick days happen. Training days happen. Suddenly, asking a teacher to cram just one more thing into their school year becomes laughable. Most teachers will smile and nod in a staff meeting and then go back to business as usual in their classrooms. So, the biggest question around digital literacy is not of its value, but of where in pacing guide does it fit in?
I believe it requires a perspective shift. Technology is not an add on to the schedule. It should be blended in. It’s a powerful tool when used properly and can accelerate learning through powerful visuals, interactions, and differentiation. Saying “I don’t have time for classroom tech” is like saying “I don’t have time for graph paper.” In many ways, technology can be a time saver! In some cases, the time saved can give students more time to actually think about the content! An example of this in my own room is teaching compound interest. Students spend so much time just doing calculations over and over that they don’t get to reflect and consider what is happening as interest earns interest. However, when I began to utilize spreadsheets as a way to calculate interest, it sped up students abilities to do calculations.They could calculate for much longer investment periods and see the results of compounding to an even greater effect than before. They learned how to use a spreadsheet and several tools, such as the formula writer.They practiced the mathematical practice of looking for repeated reasoning in the spreadsheets code and attended to precision in writing their equations. Some of them were able to extend their learning by learning how to create charts digitally from a spreadsheet to provide visual evidence for a presentation. Not to mention, because they finished faster, they got to compare results with others in the class and think about the pros and cons of choosing a bank. They got to think about why people might choose a bank with a lower interest rate and what those extra features might be worth to people. I share this example because the “solution” to digital literacy is integration. My compound interest yielded extra results. They learned the basic formula and understood the difference between simple and compound interest. Along the way, they also learned how to reorganize a spreadsheet and use cell names to write equations to automatically calculate interest for any principal. All in the same amount of time my pacing guide allowed for those lessons from the curriculum. Proper technology integration should at the minimum make your class time more efficient. There may be some upfront investment. I briefly “fell behind” while I taught students how to read cell names and how to type operations into the spreadsheet, but they quickly made that time back because typing “B4*A6=” is significantly faster than doing 2237.53*1.0125 on a calculator. In the middle of the road, students master the content while learning valuable skills alongside the content. At it’s best, technology integration provides new opportunities for students to explore content and come to conclusions. An example of this I enjoy is Desmos, an online graphing calculator resource. They have a game called “Marble Sliders” where the students only objective is to get a marble to slide down a ramp, gather stars, and land in a target area. The catch is that they have to build and adjust ramps by using coordinates or writing equations but there are incredibly limited instructions. Students basically need to experiment with different numbers and ideas until they find things that work. Their thought process is authentic. Some of them complete the entire activity with only coordinates. They count squares on the screen and visualize and convert it into an order pair. Some students realize how tedious that could be and start trying linear equations. They learn that the coefficient adjusts the steepness of the line. They now have a concept of slope and what effect changing slope can have without any lecture or vocabulary or books. All this while learning how to make graphs online, how to write mathematical ideas on a computer, and more. Technology is here to stay. It’s not going anywhere and we owe it to our students to teach it. Luckily for us, we just so happen to benefit from it when we do it well.
3 Comments
james
6/18/2017 12:57:34 pm
Patrick,
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6/19/2017 01:22:10 pm
I agree that the “solution” to digital literacy is integration. It's hard for some schools to integrate when the technology isn't in place in their classrooms. To make technolgy be apart of all our schools we need to have easy to use equipment in our classrooms. In Napa we have classrooms that have the teacher's laptop and LCD projector that as the only technology they have. Our district isn't equal in what we have in our classrooms. Some teacher's at our site don't have the internet in their rooms. They have to go to computer labs for their students to use technology. Integration of all programs and classroom is key for 21st century classrooms to work.
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Nancy
6/19/2017 03:48:35 pm
Patrick,
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