This week, I had the distinct pleasure to co-teach with my friend and colleague Meredith Fenton with her IB PYP class. In the International Baccalaureate program, there is a clear expectation that digital technologies are effectively integrated into the classroom to support student learning. I was thrilled to read the new IB PYP document “The Learning Community” in preparation for our session since the philosophical underpinnings so clearly align with my own. In the document, technology integration is seen as a 3-part interconnected model: Learning about, Learning with and Learning through digital technologies.
Learning Intention: How can I integrate (digital) technology to facilitate student learning?
During our session, we tried to model how TCs might integrate digital technologies to help students develop aspects of their ‘Learner profile’ and ‘Approaches to Learning’ (ATLs). We took a play based and experiential approach as recommended in “The Learning Community” (p. 49)
According to Bird and Edwards (2015), students begin engaging with the object/device—digital or non-digital—with exploration in mind to investigate, learn and test their theories about Technology in the PYP
By allowing students time to explore any technology (be it a digital or analogue tool such as a math manipulative), we engage their naturally curious brains, allowing them to ‘play out’ the technology. Doing so can lead to more purposeful use, peer teaching and even student-driven innovation.
Members of the learning community actively choose and use multiple technologies in the classroom. This supports a key aspect of technology literacy: the capability to discern appropriate technologies based on the desired outcomes of the learning activity or inquiry (Davies, 2011 in The Learning Community p. 49).
Students played with ‘StoryBird‘ – a very visual and artistic little browser based app for digital storytelling. Within 10 minutes, the students were able to effectively utilize the app to begin creating stories and poems. We learned that we can also find and read stories shared in the storybook community. I love this example called “I’m a Teacher” created by Ms. Bader to share her Philosophy of Education as a teacher candidate or early career teacher.
- This application allows students to begin with picture prompts – keep in mind that it is best for students who are able to read and write. For students who can not yet access text, there are more multimodal options including: ShowMe, a digital whiteboard app allowing all learners to voice narrate, draw and add images and text. You may find this blog post about digital storytelling of interest.
Something I hope I was able to convey through modelling is an approach to introducing ‘new’ digital technologies to students in an experiential and playful way. Rather than ‘teaching’ whole class ‘how to’ use a particular technology (and risk losing many of your students to boredom or going over their heads), I learned to provide my students (of ALL ages from K through secondary) opportunities to play with a given app or tool for a period of time prior to there being an expectation of actually using it for a given purpose. I find this helps lessen anxiety and affords students the opportunity to learn from and teach one another. My ‘general’ process for this:
- Show the students a very brief example of the technology ‘in action’
- Provide time for the students to play with the technology in pairs or small groups (with the instruction that they may only ask the teacher to help with tech issues – can’t open, won’t boot, etc – for the first 5 to 15 min depending on the complexity of the tech).
- Teacher circulates and invites students to share (or ‘satellite’) their knowledge with others.
- Once students have had exposure to different ways of representing their learning, I strongly recommend providing them with some choice and agency. Providing the choice of medium, from digital to analogue, helps meet the needs of varied learners and supports a Universal Design for Learning approach to planning and teaching.
- Remember to honour the creative process by allowing time for students to share what they made!
*A lesson outline showing learning intentions and assessment from our session today Storybird lesson – KDU
In my experience, students can and will teach themselves and each other even more complex applications. I followed the above process with a group of grade 1/2 students using Garage Band to learn to create PodCasts. Within about 1/2 hour, all of the students were able to create a file, add loops, add audio and images. After their initial exploration, students storyboarded and created some very informative podcasts about the salmon in our classroom were ready to share with the school!
As a long time elementary teacher, I try to provide my students with time to ‘play out’ and experiment with any technology – from math manipulative to science equipment to art supplies to digital technologies. Philosophically, I love being able to incorporate the above approach into my co-teaching in the BEd program and hope TCs are reminded to give their own students such opportunities in order to allow them time to co-construct their knowledge and skills (and develop positive attitudes towards technologies and learning!) YD
References:
Bird, J. and Edwards, S. (2015), Children learning to use technologies through play. Br J Educ Technol, 46: 1149-1160. doi:10.1111/bjet.12191
