My Experience
I think the two most exciting and rewarding things about integrating ICT into the classroom are its potential to:
Considering the challenges that ELL students face, as well as their hopes and dreams for the future, ICT can play a key role in their learning experience within and beyond high school.
Computers
Ultimately, it was a challenge in both venue and hardware availability to have both teacher and students learning through technology together. In the classroom, I had a whiteboard, a DVD player, and a projector that I could hook up to my laptop. The lights in the room were all or nothing, which made it incredibly difficult for students to take notes if I taught via the laptop and projector or showed a DVD. Were this my own classroom, I would look into purchasing some floor lamps that I could place in the back corners of the room to aid with visibility. I would also want to have a light switch near the DVD player and projector, as I found I was running back and forth all the time. There was one laptop cart (of 10 laptops) available for classroom use, but I didn't have any assignments that involved group-work whereby it made sense for only one person to use a laptop. If students could benefit by using ICT to complete an assignment (e.g., writing via word processor), the only option was to book a lab at least a few days ahead of time and hope that all computers would be functional.
Fortunately, was nearly always the case, though I did have to get students to bring in personal devices when the only lab that I could book had too few computers for my class. This particular lab was extremely cramped, and the computers faced away from the blackboard, which was also mostly blocked by two large tables, making it virtually impossible to do anything but provide minimal work instructions. Obviously, there would have to be significant changes to the room's configuration to make it more user-friendly.
Other labs either lacked a computer from which I could teach (since all had to be occupied by students) or lacked a projector, but I could at least provide some instruction via whiteboard. The challenge then, however, was ensuring that students were paying attention and not typing, clicking, or surfing. While using laptops would enable me to ask student to close their screens when I wanted to give instructions, and would allow students to move around the room and arrange themselves as needed, laptops don't have nearly the longevity, processing power, storage, or reliability that desktops do. Laptops need to be charged regularly or plugged in, secured somehow to prevent theft, and tend to manifest errors more quickly and frequently than desktops, often due to the fact that the hardware takes more wear and tear (heating issues, among other things). Monitors on pivoting arms might accomplish similar objectives (I could ask students to turn their monitors around), but this would require a substantial upgrade, possibly including changes to furniture.
Smartphones
Using the lab also made it impossible for my students to eat or drink in class. Churchill has a pretty early start time, and some of my students had early morning commitments with sports, or having to take the bus, so it was not uncommon for students to eat a quick breakfast in my class. Not being able to eat during class was at times hard for them.
I allowed students to use Smartphones in class, and many of my ELL students used electronic dictionaries and translators, while other students accessed class notes or search engines (e.g., Google). Most students enjoyed being able to listen to music on their phones during independent work times. I never had assignments or activities that required use of a Smartphone, as I felt I could achieve my objectives more easily and more quickly through verbal discussion and writing on the whiteboard. Collaborating or assessing with a Smartphone (e.g., using PollEverywhere, Wordle, Twitter, Google Forms, Socrative, etc.) would require that I be able to display results on the projector which takes much more time and coordination.
Additionally, because a Smartphone enables users to switch from educational to social use so quickly, I am not inclined to try using it on a regular basis as an assessment tool. Being able to use a Smartphone for educational purposes, and to draw boundaries between personal and professional use, are important skills that students need to develop, so I rarely disallowed Smartphone use. It was extremely difficult, however, to discern when a Smartphone was being used inappropriately and to delineate conditions under which to tolerate (or not tolerate) use. Where should I draw the line between distraction and taking mini mind-breaks during work? How much time should students have to select songs to listen to, and do songs have to be loaded on the phone or can they select YouTube playlists? Does taking away a student's phone help him or her develop the skills and mindset necessary for responsible use? I found my threshold was when students were paying attention to their phones while I was instructing or while classmates were asking or answering questions, as this clearly prevented them from the active listening required for learning and maintaining a respectful classroom culture. My response was to request that the students put the phones out of sight, though I think it is better have students leave their phones with me and collect them at the end of class. This is something I will change for future teaching.
Software
I chose to stick to software that was accepted under CBE's guidelines, and in particular, focused on using the CBE-approved Learning Management System: Brightspace/D2L. The program is integrated with CORE (a new and underdeveloped Alberta teaching resource hub for which there are few and poor high school English resources) and Turnitin (a delightful tool that detects where and how much students have copied from online sources, which I used regularly). It was a great tool by which to share information with my students through news feeds, calendar events, and modules: I could easily hyperlink to assignment documents, external resources (e.g., YouTube videos, ebooks, audio files, websites), and other features within D2L. It also enabled me to keep track of my students' work. It is not, however, set up for collaboration. The interface for the discussion forum is a bit awkward and unusual for students; however, posts can include hyperlinks and attachments, and I found it mostly easy to determine who said what for evaluation purposes. The closest the tool comes to genuine collaboration would be the Live Meeting feature, as this allows for both videoconferencing and simultaneous document editing. This is something I did not test out but plan to in the future.
My background in information management technology combined with some coursework earlier this year led me to consider Google Apps as a group of interfacing software tools with great potential for classroom collaboration. Something I tested in one of my units was using a Google Site and Google apps to create a more collaborative space for me and my students. This project in my ELA 10-1 class employed many of the recommended practices for reading and writing. My primary goals were to help them develop skills of collaboration and problem-solving (for the task and for the technology); to expose them to new online tools and to have them create something that they could be proud of and share with others easily; and to have an artifact of their learning that they could access and tweak outside the class's bounds of space and time. The two main technical difficulties I encountered with this were: 1) some students did not use their CBE gmail account regularly (or hadn't ever used it before) and many were more comfortable using their personal gmail accounts to interact with the site; 2) I didn't have permission to access either their personal or school-bestowed Google drives. This resulted in many emails back and forth between the students and I requesting permissions to view and edit each other's work. There were, however, marked gains in their ability to collaborate, problem-solve, communicate, comprehend the text, and think critically and creatively. These gains were captured in the students' debriefs and in their survey responses.
One tool I would like to teach my students to use is Diigo. I modeled how to annotate an ebook during one class, but I think I would like to integrate this technology into students' research activities. The tool, like Google Apps and unlike D2L, has great potential for use within and beyond high school education.
- facilitate genuine collaboration among students, among teachers and administration, and between students and teachers, and
- extend learning beyond the time and space of the classroom.
Considering the challenges that ELL students face, as well as their hopes and dreams for the future, ICT can play a key role in their learning experience within and beyond high school.
Computers
Ultimately, it was a challenge in both venue and hardware availability to have both teacher and students learning through technology together. In the classroom, I had a whiteboard, a DVD player, and a projector that I could hook up to my laptop. The lights in the room were all or nothing, which made it incredibly difficult for students to take notes if I taught via the laptop and projector or showed a DVD. Were this my own classroom, I would look into purchasing some floor lamps that I could place in the back corners of the room to aid with visibility. I would also want to have a light switch near the DVD player and projector, as I found I was running back and forth all the time. There was one laptop cart (of 10 laptops) available for classroom use, but I didn't have any assignments that involved group-work whereby it made sense for only one person to use a laptop. If students could benefit by using ICT to complete an assignment (e.g., writing via word processor), the only option was to book a lab at least a few days ahead of time and hope that all computers would be functional.
Fortunately, was nearly always the case, though I did have to get students to bring in personal devices when the only lab that I could book had too few computers for my class. This particular lab was extremely cramped, and the computers faced away from the blackboard, which was also mostly blocked by two large tables, making it virtually impossible to do anything but provide minimal work instructions. Obviously, there would have to be significant changes to the room's configuration to make it more user-friendly.
Other labs either lacked a computer from which I could teach (since all had to be occupied by students) or lacked a projector, but I could at least provide some instruction via whiteboard. The challenge then, however, was ensuring that students were paying attention and not typing, clicking, or surfing. While using laptops would enable me to ask student to close their screens when I wanted to give instructions, and would allow students to move around the room and arrange themselves as needed, laptops don't have nearly the longevity, processing power, storage, or reliability that desktops do. Laptops need to be charged regularly or plugged in, secured somehow to prevent theft, and tend to manifest errors more quickly and frequently than desktops, often due to the fact that the hardware takes more wear and tear (heating issues, among other things). Monitors on pivoting arms might accomplish similar objectives (I could ask students to turn their monitors around), but this would require a substantial upgrade, possibly including changes to furniture.
Smartphones
Using the lab also made it impossible for my students to eat or drink in class. Churchill has a pretty early start time, and some of my students had early morning commitments with sports, or having to take the bus, so it was not uncommon for students to eat a quick breakfast in my class. Not being able to eat during class was at times hard for them.
I allowed students to use Smartphones in class, and many of my ELL students used electronic dictionaries and translators, while other students accessed class notes or search engines (e.g., Google). Most students enjoyed being able to listen to music on their phones during independent work times. I never had assignments or activities that required use of a Smartphone, as I felt I could achieve my objectives more easily and more quickly through verbal discussion and writing on the whiteboard. Collaborating or assessing with a Smartphone (e.g., using PollEverywhere, Wordle, Twitter, Google Forms, Socrative, etc.) would require that I be able to display results on the projector which takes much more time and coordination.
Additionally, because a Smartphone enables users to switch from educational to social use so quickly, I am not inclined to try using it on a regular basis as an assessment tool. Being able to use a Smartphone for educational purposes, and to draw boundaries between personal and professional use, are important skills that students need to develop, so I rarely disallowed Smartphone use. It was extremely difficult, however, to discern when a Smartphone was being used inappropriately and to delineate conditions under which to tolerate (or not tolerate) use. Where should I draw the line between distraction and taking mini mind-breaks during work? How much time should students have to select songs to listen to, and do songs have to be loaded on the phone or can they select YouTube playlists? Does taking away a student's phone help him or her develop the skills and mindset necessary for responsible use? I found my threshold was when students were paying attention to their phones while I was instructing or while classmates were asking or answering questions, as this clearly prevented them from the active listening required for learning and maintaining a respectful classroom culture. My response was to request that the students put the phones out of sight, though I think it is better have students leave their phones with me and collect them at the end of class. This is something I will change for future teaching.
Software
I chose to stick to software that was accepted under CBE's guidelines, and in particular, focused on using the CBE-approved Learning Management System: Brightspace/D2L. The program is integrated with CORE (a new and underdeveloped Alberta teaching resource hub for which there are few and poor high school English resources) and Turnitin (a delightful tool that detects where and how much students have copied from online sources, which I used regularly). It was a great tool by which to share information with my students through news feeds, calendar events, and modules: I could easily hyperlink to assignment documents, external resources (e.g., YouTube videos, ebooks, audio files, websites), and other features within D2L. It also enabled me to keep track of my students' work. It is not, however, set up for collaboration. The interface for the discussion forum is a bit awkward and unusual for students; however, posts can include hyperlinks and attachments, and I found it mostly easy to determine who said what for evaluation purposes. The closest the tool comes to genuine collaboration would be the Live Meeting feature, as this allows for both videoconferencing and simultaneous document editing. This is something I did not test out but plan to in the future.
My background in information management technology combined with some coursework earlier this year led me to consider Google Apps as a group of interfacing software tools with great potential for classroom collaboration. Something I tested in one of my units was using a Google Site and Google apps to create a more collaborative space for me and my students. This project in my ELA 10-1 class employed many of the recommended practices for reading and writing. My primary goals were to help them develop skills of collaboration and problem-solving (for the task and for the technology); to expose them to new online tools and to have them create something that they could be proud of and share with others easily; and to have an artifact of their learning that they could access and tweak outside the class's bounds of space and time. The two main technical difficulties I encountered with this were: 1) some students did not use their CBE gmail account regularly (or hadn't ever used it before) and many were more comfortable using their personal gmail accounts to interact with the site; 2) I didn't have permission to access either their personal or school-bestowed Google drives. This resulted in many emails back and forth between the students and I requesting permissions to view and edit each other's work. There were, however, marked gains in their ability to collaborate, problem-solve, communicate, comprehend the text, and think critically and creatively. These gains were captured in the students' debriefs and in their survey responses.
One tool I would like to teach my students to use is Diigo. I modeled how to annotate an ebook during one class, but I think I would like to integrate this technology into students' research activities. The tool, like Google Apps and unlike D2L, has great potential for use within and beyond high school education.