I have been utilizing technology, especially digital, online tools for approximately ten years in my educational and professional career. There are a whole slew of applications I use frequently and without much consideration: SharePoint, Firefox, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, Tableau, SPSS and many others. These are all specific to my professional career, human-computer interaction. Given that, it is interesting to consider what is the best way to discover and implement technology for the classroom. After reading the assigned weekly content I started to review technological frameworks to identify the criteria that make the most sense to me.
I ended up settling on a framework designed for elementary and middle-school students. It consists of the following requirements:
- Active - Do students actively use the technology or are they passively learning?
- Usable - Is the technology easy to learn and use? Does it accommodate students with special needs?
- Collaborative - Does the technology allow for collaborative, team-based learning?
- Relevant - Does the technology pass on a skill or competency that is useful outside of the classroom context?
As a user interface designer I have a passion for technology that meets the needs of the expected users (in this case elementary and middle-school students). It must be accessible and usable, it must promote active learning, it should accommodate collaboration and team-building, and it should be a technology or skill that is useful outside of just the classroom environment. Other considerations (not included but probably critical before final approval): cost, complexity of implementation and use for instructors and staff, length of license (yearly renewal or do we own the product?), and also can the student access and use the application at home?
Kyle - I like your criteria for which digital tool to use, especially, "is it useful to students outside of class?" and "is it for passive or active learning?" I should add these to my criteria.
ReplyDeleteYour toolbox display is very good way to share and I like that it describes what the apps are used for. You included Prezi and Canva. I keep seeing others talk about and include these in their presentations and other work. I have these on my list to check out and "play around" and to get comfortable with. I started to use Haiku Deck for one assignment, but ended up switching and using Powerpoint. I need to go back and try again with Haiku Deck. Several people know I've taken this class and will want to know what new things I've learned and what apps to use and how. Besides my own apps I've chosen and used in class, I hope to share some of what others are including in their toolboxes. I can see in 6th & 7th grade social studies with World Civilizations and in high school with GHOW, using the last app you included, Google Arts and Culture.
Thanks for sharing. I really think your "target audience" will really like these digital tools.
I also like your criteria, especially "is it for passive or active learning", and the usability criteria. Often, in the past, when I've tried to implement tech, the kids have just been passively viewing something. With younger kids, it's a challenge finding things that are usable by the younger grades, but still interactive. I'm certainly on the hunt for more active and usable resources now.
ReplyDeleteKyle,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your review and wanted to lift out a couple of pieces that I found particularly thoughtful.
1. The column on your rubric for Importance is so, well, important! This gets at the idea that sometimes there are non-negotiables and there are nice-to-haves when we're reviewing technology for a particular purpose. If we haven't taken the time to clarify what job we are hiring technology to do for us, we may not know the relative importance of the evaluation dimensions whatever they are.
2. I liked your annotated approach. With all of the choices out there, I don't think that rating systems that are entirely binary will ultimately help us to make the best decisions. We need the binary data and we need data that is more qualitative and nuanced.
3. I also appreciated that you gave yourself the freedom to begin with a framework that admittedly didn't ask every question you'd ever want to know about an app but centered on a core of relatively important considerations. Your list of questions to ask for each dimension was also a good example. This is a good way to influence the way people approach an evaluation situation and may ultimately transfer into other areas. The questions we ask in evaluation situations reveal much about how we're thinking about a challenge.