Blog #5 Research

Educational Technology Research

Flipped Learning

“Technology will never replace great teaching, but technology in the hands of a great teacher, can be transnational.” --George Couros

The article I chose was, “Trends in Digital Learning: How K-12 leaders are empowering personalized learning in America’s schools,” from Project Tomorrow Speak Up. There were two statistics that caught my attention right away, one dealing with principals and the other with a focus on parents.

“Two-thirds of school principals now want new teachers to be proficient in using digital tools such as social media apps for communications with parents and students” (2016). Working in a school with seasoned teachers, I can see how principals would want to hire educators who have 21st century skills. Over the past couple of years, the new teachers that were hired are more proficient with tech skills than the current staff, but not as proficient as I thought they would be. Now this sounds like I am tooting my own horn, but I did work on my tech skills over the years and I am just as proficient and in some cases, more so, than the newer teachers. Seeing the importance of collaboration, blended learning, digital citizenship, and 21st century skills, I dove in head first to learn as much as I could. My thinking is, if teachers expect our students to try and get out of their comfort zone, we need to expect the same from ourselves.

My school acquired iPads and Chromebooks over the past three and half years, but since I have been working in my current school, the teachers always had at least one computer in their classroom and a lab to use. Keeping up with one’s skills can be difficult if the devices and opportunities are not available. A few years back it was difficult to find a staff pd where teachers actually used computers, due to places not having Wi-fi. Teachers would watch a long drawn out Power Point, that was usually read to them. How exciting! Now, Wi-fi is standard in most places where staff pds are held, thus making things much easier for teachers to be involved in hands-on learning.

For myself, my interest in technology motivated me to seek out how to use it with my students, and every time I found something I could use with my students, I did. Since trends in education are promoting active learning and moving away from the ever exciting lecture, educators need to step up.

Tech Comic

The same article had another statistic that I found intriguing. “55 percent of parents would like their child’s teacher or school to simply “text them” when they want to communicate information.  In 2010, text messaging was the preference of only five percent of parents” (2016). What drew me to this statistic was that this is not true for the majority of parents in my school. My school is lower to middle class, hard working, blue collar families. Many families will seek out a teacher, another school parent, or their own child to help them with using email and texting. Currently, my school will send out blast emails to the families, we do not text our school families. The teachers found that parents were calling the school secretary to find out if we had early dismissal or if it was a special fun lunch day. We were baffled, because all the answers were already sent out days ahead of time in a newsletter reminder and a monthly calendar. The principal asked us the teachers to poll the parents and we found that many parents said that they did not receive the email and did not check email. Many of the teachers, including myself, double checked the contact information, only to find that no contact errors existed. I even asked a couple of the parents, who I knew I could approach, and recent emails with them present with me after school. In every case the parents were receiving the information, but many parents were simply not checking for school communication. Now when we send out communication to parents, we not only send out an email, but also print out the newsletters and calendars for our parents. Why do both? Simple, that is what our parents want.

In the past, I used Edmodo, and asked parents to connect with their child’s account, in order to make sure posted homework and announcements were received by parents. This year, since Google Classroom has a parent summary feature, I am using that as my main source of communication, and the feedback has been positive. The occasional email is still sent, especially when the information is directly for the parents. Some families have called me the Tech Queen, only because I do strive to use tech in my room with a purpose. At first, I was not sure how I really felt about that title, but knowing that parents and students know that I do include tech as often as I can, in order to help prepare my students for high school and hopefully beyond, I have come to appreciate that title.

“2016 Digital Learning Reports from Blackboard and Speak Up.” Project Tomorrow | Speak Up, www.tomorrow.org/speakup/2016-digital-learning-reports-from-blackboard-and-speak-up.
Resource--full article Resource--web page

Additional Resources

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept09/vol67/num01/21st-Century-Skills@-The-Challenges-Ahead.aspx
https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/6783
https://www.campussuite.com/6-key-school-communication-channels-and-how-to-use-them/
http://www.crescerance.com/what-parents-really-want-from-school-communicators/