This blog is part of the #blogamonth challenge. Join in our community of educators and give your blogging an audience, a purpose, and accept the monthly prompt!
Gifts of EdTech Past
I left the classroom with Vis-A-Vis stains on my hands. So to consider my gifts of educational technology could be to consider the gifts of #edtech past. Yet technology always moves forward; we can find similarities between what enhanced my practice then and what teachers need more of now. The benefits which advanced my practice back then impacted time I spent on tasks that required a disproportionate use of my time and overcoming student inefficiencies.
In the classroom the two technologies which made the biggest impact on my teaching practice were: online testing softwares and software/hardware which enhanced my visual presentations to students. For testing softwares, I used ExamView test banks and used my online textbook’s assessment tool. This allowed me to generate high quality assessments with an easy way to look at standards, item types, and score (read: and not create all this long-hand). For visual enhancements to my presented content, yes I loved , but in my defense it was also about the quality of the presentation – as much as a teacher with an overhead could. I occasionally borrowed a projector – and used a Promethean ActivSlate as a wireless mouse. And at the time for me it was Heaven. Most of the other times I was using a TV (Read: box mounted to the corner of a very long science lab) to show my PowerPoint, and a laser/wireless mouse. I liked showing action in my presentations for students to build their understanding of the concepts I was trying to impart. And I valued my mobility around a classroom.
Gifts of EdTech Present
Fast forward a decade.
I am an eLearning Specialist since 2009. In my district, that means I am an account administrator on many edtech products, our district LMS, and provide/coordinate many technical trainings/PL for teachers. So, in some way I have a different view of the issue concerning what gifts to give teachers in the educational technology realm now.
Teachers know some things could be done for them, somethings do not require the precious time of teachers. Assessment softwares have come so far! Free versions of programs are now incredible and hopefully assessments, formative to benchmarks, are given online with relative ease.
Teachers also want certain things from the content they share with their students. They want high quality, but do not necessarily have the skill set to create to the level they want to share with their students. Luckily some marketplaces and rapid-development softwares have filled this gap. Some teachers are developing a newly-discovered skill set even and creating themselves.
Teachers do not want to be front and center of their classroom all the time. Honest. And the increased amount of hardware and adaptive-personalizing softwares which can help them gather students into flexible groupings as needed. Content can remain available beyond class time and the classroom.
Gifts of EdTech Future
I am so grateful that technology keeps marching forward.
I love #edtech and the continuing gifts it gives to education.
Won’t you consider joining the #blogamonth challenge this month? and share what educational technology gifts you are grateful for?
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