EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY PHILOSOPHY

Ive heard and read various modes of thinking on the idea of who bears the weight of responsibility for learning whether it is the teacher or the student. From both the student and the teacher perspectives, I fall somewhere in the middle. While I certainly believe a learner should be engaged and motivated to make their best effort, I also believe a teacher should make adjustments where needed and appropriate, as well. For example, if a majority of a class exhibits trouble comprehending a lesson, it makes sense to me as a facilitator of learning, to re-teach that portion of the subject matter from a different perspective/learning style, and not just say its the students responsibility. In my experience, Ive seen one class have no problem showing understanding on the same lesson that another class needed additional activities in which to solidify comprehension. Technology can be an invaluable tool in which to enhance this effort. When I was teaching 4th grade Social Studies, a lesson that examples this is one on longitude and latitude. The lesson utilized a visual of the globe, a map, and a class interactive activity to identify lines of longitude and latitude and their coordinates. My students generally exhibited understanding of the lesson content via successful completion of their homework assignment. However, I had one class which struggled to comprehend the concept. I regrouped and used an idea to use an orange as an alternative method - again using auditory, visual, and kinesthetic approaches - using the object to give the students in this class a different perspective on the lesson. This was very successful, as the class overall showed a much better understanding of the material after this re-teaching session. Even though others before them

had not needed such, since every group is a reflection of a different combination of primary and secondary learning styles, I felt it my responsibility to provide another angle of learning to promote success for the class. Technology could now be used [I dont know if it would have been available at that time], even in the initial lesson, to provide an interactive online activity that would have provided a different type of visual stimulation reinforcing the concept. Overall, I utilize a constructivist approach to learning, assisting learners in building new ideas by blending current knowledge through their filter of past experiences. Technology can lend itself as a great teaching partner to offer a resource for reinforcing, re-teaching, enriching, and promoting opportunity for more in-depth interaction within a content area with this learning theory. One of the ideas of which Im a proponent is teaching a concept from various angles to prepare a student to successfully answer questions on the subject, regardless of how the information is presented to them [versus teaching one particular way because it will be presented on an assessment in that fashion]. I also believe in making learning fun not necessarily always a game; but frankly, in my life, I would make things that werent as enjoyable to me into some sort of game so I could motivate myself to engage the way I needed to achieve what was necessary. For example, I would make house cleaning chores into a game, so I would get my mind off of the chore of it. Was I a motivated and e ngaged learner? Sure though I made the choice to do so. I want to impart this idea of self-motivation to my students for areas of learning that arent as naturally interesting for them. This shift in perspective will better enable students to look for what can be learned in every experience and make the most of any environment.

Over the years, some of my public school teacher friends have expressed frustration about the stringent testing schedules that have evolved over the years, and their effect on our common educational philosophy. For example, the same teacher who used various interactive methods and angles with which to assure a deeper level of comprehension is re-assigned and has the same group of students a couple of years later. This grade has more assessments throughout the year and she is unable to use all the engaging learning tools she prefers due to time constraints and the more rigid testing schedule. Other teachers express the same frustration that they are no longer able to teach in the manner they feel is most effective and engaging for both student and instructor. In their minds, they have lost who they are as teachers, as well as the positive impact on their students. Ive seen some come up with great ideas through which to compensate for same, and some become de-motivated because they felt their adjustments were ineffective. I see the use of technology as one that would assist in helping instructors with this issue, providing a means to fill in learning gaps more effectively than some traditional approaches within the current time and schedule constraints. One way this could be accomplished is via dramatic, skit, and musical interplays. Technology can be used to assist the teacher with preclass preparation [i.e. watching a video or prezi, or completing content portions via a class wiki], so students are on the same page and ready to participate in some of the fine arts enrichment and reinforcement exercises that we enjoy and find effective tools for learning. The idea to complete and present a project using videography [create a music video, record a documentary, skit, or dramatization] has emerged in recent years, and I find very compelling. My son was highly motivated [even in a subject that wasnt as interesting to him] and excelled

in his learning environment when given fine arts or creative alternatives to the traditional presentation. I believe it is an excellent outlet for students who excel in that type creative avenue, and would like to offer it as an optional form of expression for my students, as well. The promotion of more in-depth critical thinking versus surface or minimal required learning of the content is another part of my learning philosophy, and a concern in the tight classroom schedules within which many teachers work. Technology affords itself wonderfully to the promotion of such, redeeming the time in a tight scope and sequence schedule by interweaving traditional writing exercises, in which a student actually utilizes their own handwriting [which I think is important in the developing speller and writer] with blog-type activities, both open-ended and with writing prompts as digging deeper exercises to extend thinking. All of these can be designed to use various areas of the brain to potentially produce an even more in-depth learning experience for the student, as well as exhibited comprehension in assessments for teachers and schools to validate the process. Since an effective Educational Technology Philosophy should be interwoven within a persons Educational Philosophy because one helps to accomplish the other, so Ive found it assists in reinforcing [and identifying, where appropriate] the values that motivate me to teach. The reflection involved helps prioritize the ideals that continue to breed passion for the learning journey and draw me in to the art of effective, engaging teaching methodology. The affordances of technology to aide in this quest are invaluable when used to compliment the learning environment as whole, and to create a well-rounded experience for both teacher and student.