The reality of educational technology in my classroom, and school, is that we have a lot of great products in small quantities, but few people to show us how to make the most of them. We have some great ideas but do not always have the technology to back it up.
Classroom: In a split 5/6 classroom of 24 students, we have 6 iPads this year and half of them were bought with grant money earned by doing a NOIIE project. The tech department controls the iPads and downloads so it’s more difficult to play with them and figure out what they can do. Ironically, they’ve become less user friendly. Students use iPads to document all their assignments and activities through their digital portfolios in my class, so a better ratio would be handy to allow students to try other forms of recording: audio and video.
Although students learn very quickly how to use our portfolio app, Spaces Edu, they do not have a strong understanding of other educational ways to engage with the iPads, other than by gaming.
Computer Lab: We have one computer lab with 24 computers in our school that is booked out as part of our master schedule. My intermediate class has two hour long blocks in the lab each week. We mostly use this time to catch up on reflections for our digital portfolios, do research for projects, type up writing assignments, or work on skills through sites such as Mathletics. We do have access to Minecraft Education, but it is our librarian who is familiar with this site and I do not have access to him during computer times this year.
There are, of course, other digital technologies that get used from time to time in the classroom. We have access to an Oculus- which can be used by only one student at a time, Ozobots for coding work in grade 6, microscopes that connect to the iPads, and other goodies.
We also have an ever increasing variety of non-digital technologies available as we’ve become more excited about ADST curriculum and hands on learning. In my own classroom I have snap circuits, a water bottle rocket launcher, tower gardens, a tool for measuring the weight at which popsicle stick bridges will collapse, a fish tank that supports itself with a hydroponic garden atop it, a cooking set, and various other technologies designed to get kids excited about learning.
All of this is to say that although technology, especially digital technologies, have become more prevalent in classrooms, it is still the discretion of the teacher as to which ones are used effectively. That means we need to invest time (usually our own) into learning these technologies and developing scaffolded instructions for students to become proficient with them as well. While some of our students are 21st century learners with an aptitude and affinity for the digital world, many more are still figuring out how to work a google search, manage sites and passwords, or even spell something closely enough that autocorrect can guess what their inquiry might be.
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