Rethinking the Role, Repurposing the Tool: Intentional Planning for Technology in the Classroom

Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to work with the MCEA-content cohort, a group of future elementary educators I worked with last semester in Teaching English Language Arts. This time I was asked to present on technology integration in the elementary classroom, specifically focusing on science and social studies content areas. In planning how to best use our time, I decided to opt out of the “tools–> idea approach,” which is typical of professional development sessions. Often times, these sessions provide deep insight into applications for a few specific tools, but I find myself wondering what larger conceptual understandings participants are able to develop in order to lead to more diverse and sustained changes in practice? Is it more productive to develop a deep understanding of a tool in order to implement it on return to the classroom–or is it more effective to begin to develop an understanding of the larger framework which might undergird all future decision making processes?
With these questions in mind, I decided to go for the un-sexy approach—no flashy tools, student demonstrations, or lists upon lists. All of this is readily available online, easy to search for, and ever-changing. Instead, we began our work together discussing the considerations that too often get overlooked in our rush to implement the latest and greatest. We focused on the why and the how.

The Why
We spent some time deconstructing the reasoning for integrating technology in the first place–what you hope it will do to transform the learning process and how it will improve and deepen student understanding in a particular context. Implications of this question are also inherent in asking oneself WHO is doing all of the work. Who is creating, collaborating, problem solving, trouble-shooting, and producing with the technology tools–the teacher or the student? This led us to consider how the same tools can be repurposed as “tools for teaching” focusing on teacher-led instruction or as “tools for learning” focusing on student-led inquiry.

The How
Taking the time to develop intentional and well-thought out purposes and goals for rethinking instruction can then lead us to more easily break down the multiple “hows” involved. I broke these into three categories: procedural (implications for planning and attention to the TPACK framework), technical (implications for how teachers and students will learn to use the tools), and logistical (implications for implementing the process in the classroom and communicating to stakeholders).

Quickfire Workshop!
The second half of our time together was focused on group workshop where participants integrated various tools to construct multi-modal representations of central content understandings (tied to Wisconsin’s elementary performance standards). Utilizing laptops, tablets, and cellphones, students were able to brainstorm and execute plans for constructing understandings across tools. For example, one group created a main Prezi hub to which students would post YouTube videos of their work. Each video was actually a screen recording of the student’s own Prezi on the given topic. Students would record their Prezi using Quicktime, import the file into iMovie, then record narration, transitions, and add music before exporting the movie file and uploading to YouTube. This process involved more steps than the students had originally anticipated, but they were eventually able to successfully accomplish the task. What is often overlooked as frustrating or confusing–how to get these tools to “talk to each other”–is actually one of the key opportunities for learning, as students build repertoires of problem solving and trouble shooting strategies that support the independence and distributed expertise needed to tackle unpredictable challenges in the digital landscape. From this perspective, the process truly is just as important as the product, and when carefully scaffolded, can sometimes even provide more lasting insights that will carry over into future work.
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Looking forward to sharing these activities with 309 and 313 in the coming weeks!
Link to the presentation site: Rethinking the Role, Repurposing the Tool: Intentional Planning for Technology in the Classroom