Technology-Enabled Classroom Culture

 Hello Everyone! 

My name is Rebecca Ethington. I’m an Elementary Ed, Special Ed teacher located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Before I became a teacher I was working in the games, tech, and the theatre industries creating new and exciting ways for people to relate to content. I have taken those skills and harnessed them in a different way, translating them over to integrating exciting and engaging technical content for the classroom. 

As a teacher, my personal philosophy for using educational technology to facilitate students' learning is that as the world changes and technology becomes so integrated in our daily lives we need to embrace the change and find ways to merge it into our classrooms in order to create a more relatable and engaging experience. Our students are surrounded by technology every day. They play games, conduct research, and communicate with friends who are worlds away, all with the technological advancements of today. Gone are the days when a classroom was lucky if it had one computer with a copy of The Oregon Trail to play. Now, every student has a school-assigned chromebook or tablet, they have access to the internet in nearly every corner of their lives, and are connected or ‘plugged in’ in their hours even beyond school. 

Utilizing technology in our classrooms isn’t just so that we can ‘stay with the times’ it’s also so we can teach our students the technological safety and literacy that they need to survive in the tech forest that our society has become.  

This integration is not just in learning applications and games, but by utilizing the technology to build lessons that weren’t possible before. It’s teaching our students how technology runs through coding opportunities that can help prepare our learners for future opportunities, it’s creating activities and assignments that take learning from pen and paper to video production and computer simulations. 

It’s not just the lessons that can benefit either, it’s the adaptive technology that gives voices to those who wouldn’t have one otherwise. That allows our students to hear, or see better than they would otherwise. It’s the tech that helps to bring all of our students to the classroom on the same field. 

Technology is not just for the students either, we can use it to monitor their progress, to search and create lessons that we may not have been able to even five years ago. Technology is everywhere, and it’s time we bring it into our classroom and create learning experiences that will help our students to thrive.

I am excited to be sharing my experience and knowledge with you today so that we can keep our classrooms engaging and fun as we adapt and move with all of the technological advancements in our world. 

Equitable Use

While it is true that technology is everywhere, that does not mean that it is fully accessible to everyone. Some students may not have devices of their own that they can access, they may not have family computers sitting and waiting for use, and they may not even have internet. 

Even though technology is present in every aspect of our lives, that does not guarantee that everyone can access it. That is why, when we use technology in our classrooms we need to make sure that we are using it with the equity of our students in mind. 

Equity does not mean that we are all given the same thing, it means that we are all given what we need to be able to succeed on the same level as our peers, and technology has paved a way to make that even easier. 

Our LEA provides a chromebook to each student K-12 that they may take home and keep with them at all times. With this chromebook they are able to access school approved sites and visit their email, google docs, Canvas and many of the apps and features that connect to it. If a student does not have access to the internet at home our internet provider provides portable routers that they can use to connect directly to the satellite wi-fi. 

The LEA makes sure that all of these are available to students to make sure that everyone can access what they need to in order to keep our use of technology equitable and make sure our students can all access what they need to succeed in school. 

With that said, it is still the responsibility of the teacher to make sure that we keep our instruction equitable as well. We should not make assignments outside of the classroom that require technology or supplies such as video cameras, cell phones, or gaming consoles, that our students may not have access to. In fact, if an assignment requires internet away from school grounds it would be important to do a survey of your students to make sure that everyone would be able to access and complete the assignment. 

Equitable use goes beyond what our students have access to, it is also about what technology has given us to bring more equity into our classrooms. Assistive and adaptive technology has come a long way in recent years and things like text to speech software, cochlear implants, as well as adaptive technology that helps with mobility and speech helps to bring equity to the classroom. 

There is a learning in each of us, and when we are given the resources we need to be successful on the same level as our peers we are given the tools that set us up for a career of success. As teachers, we can start to teach that equity both in our words and actions. By ensuring our students have what they need, and that we are assigning things in a way that is accessible to all we are fostering a sense of equity in our schools. 

Ethical Use

Ethical use of technology starts not only at home, but in the classroom. In fact, some would argue that the teaching of technological literacy and ethics begins in the classroom. 

The online world is a tricky place, with anything you could possibly know available in only a few clicks. But it’s not just information, it’s chat rooms that breed nefarious behavior, it’s a place where bullies thrive and information can get spread whether true or not, it’s chatbots and information sites that breed plagiarism. It’s a place where things will live forever, and whatever picture or text you place online will be available for anyone to see. 

Not to sound like a doomsday predictor, but with as much good as technology brings into our classrooms it also brings a lot of strife, and it is up to us to teach our students how to navigate that. 

One of the ways we can help teach our students to have ethical use with technology is by utilizing a digital citizenship course. In our LEA this is part of our common core, and many training sessions for our students are available through the state UEN and LEA sites.

These courses include classroom activities and integrated lessons to teach our students about plagiarism, online bullying, privacy issues, source validity, and even includes good communication and debate skills. Not only do these courses help our students to learn how to stay safe online and use the resources responsibly, but they can help them become better researchers and know how to use technology the correct way.

How we use technology matters, and how we teach our students to use technology and communicate within its sphere will have ripples that will go beyond the door of our classroom. Build a plan with your students, with their parents, and with your community fostering good technology practices and let those ripples soar.

Social Responsibility

Digital citizenship is important in many ways, but there is one part of what we discussed above that we should dive into a bit deeper, that of social responsibility. It’s how we interact with those we encounter online, it’s what we post and how we post it. To put it in a few worlds, it’s our digital footprint, and it’s one that will follow us through our whole lives. 

Twenty years ago we would take a picture, decide we don’t like it and throw it away. That's it, it’s gone. Now, we take a photo, put it online, and it’s there to stay. It gets screen capped, shared, logged and saved in a hundred different ways. It’s not just photos either. It’s posts and interactions, it’s how we speak and communicate to one another. 

In addition to what we post, it’s how we post. Cyber Bullying has become a large problem amongst our kids, the problem growing and spreading as we see more and more of our students and young people affected by it negatively. 

As meaningful adults in our students' lives we need to help our students learn digital responsibility from an early age and keep sharing and reteaching these skills. One of the ways I like to teach my students about digital responsibility it to teach them to THINK before they post:

T-Is it True?

H-Is it Helpful?

I- Is it Inspiring?

N- Is it Necessary?

K- Is it Kind?

If any of these questions can be answered with a “No,” then they shouldn’t make the post in question.

This ideology can really be used in so many other places and is something that should be integrated throughout the culture of the classroom as well.

We can help our students learn these behaviors not only through monitoring behaviors and providing helpful constructive feedback but by modeling those behaviors as well. It is important that we all feel safe and act responsible while online and in every part of our lives. There is room for everyone, and we can be good examples of that behavior as we teach our students to THINK.