Tech in Practice

 This year I was stationed in a grade 1 classroom.

"There is a balance to be reached between working digitally and working analog and, though it is not a question that can be answered easily, this year, I would like to explore and find MY balance. My burning question would be how to make that distinction.  There is value in showing videos modelling desirable actions such as how to draw a bird, or how to mix colours, but should I do that for each lesson? Which lessons is it okay to not do that for?"

This is how I ended my first post in this blogging assignment. This year, I can confidently state that I'm not sure if I found my balance. While I was teaching at Haysboro last semester, I used the whiteboard when I needed to write, but this year, I used the SMARTboard for just about everything I needed. I became much more proficient with it, even more so than my MT and other teacher candidates in my building. As far as striking a balance went, many of my lessons began with an esti-mystery which required Google slides. I would sometimes show slideshows of things I found interesting to help illustrate points. There were "lectures" given in which I would use various page styles on the board to draw and write while talking. For my unit of animals in winter, I started each lesson with a video of someone else telling a story from a different culture. That is all to say, I relied on the technology quite a bit. 

In contrast, there were a plethora of stories read verbally. Very few of the activities given involved the students touching the board and it would simply remain in the background with an example or with a timer (often both). 

I would like to think I struck the balance I was seeking, yet I'm still plagued by the thought that I could have done better. The tech made teaching that much easier, but it also meant that for most of the day, the students were staring, point blank, at a massive screen. As I go further into another practicum and my practice, I would like to move away from lecture-style lessons (a format I adopted as many of my students had a better grasp on spoken English rather than written) so as to cut down the amount they are staring at the screen, perhaps adopting a narrative style discussion where they are still gathered and participating but without the glare. 

That is not to say the SMARTboard was bad, in fact, it was so incredibly useful. From the videos allowing them to hear Indigenous voices from Indigenous people to being able to quickly pull up an image of anything I notice that they can't quite visualize (such a s a rabbit in deep snow). I spent many a morning and afternoon messing about with the different features of the SMARTboard, what I could and couldn't do with it until I was able to do anything I wanted with it. I learned how to write on PDF files and on internet pages, I practiced with interactivity on web pages and, most useful, the different features of the whiteboard. I helped my MT and cohort members with some of these features. 

From another teacher in the school, I learned about Polypad. This hub of virtual manipulatives was fun to play around with though I only ended up using it twice for a number talk (technically once as the second time was a do-over). For older grades, I could see it becoming more of a staple. From my MT, I was given access to books from mathology. As the physical copies are incredibly small and contain fun images to ask the students questions about, having it blown up on the board was a godsend.

In the end, the tech is here to stay. I would rather explore my ability to define things better, to speak clearer, to instill my students with a sense of self-regulation (or the ability to read an analog clock), but until then, I'm glad I now have a much better ability on how to use it.