Unit 1 - Technology Implementation Blog Post

 

Applications of Technology: [Blogging]

• Horizon Report Readings
• Social Studies Application
• ISTE Standards - Unit 1
• Learning Catalyst: Facilitator (Standards for Educators)
  ISTE Standards for Educators (2017)
  http://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-educators
  6. Facilitator
     Educators facilitate learning with technology to support student achievement of the 2016 ISTE Standards for Students.
  Knowledge Constructor (Standards for Students)
  ISTE Standards for Students
  http://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students
  http://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students#startstandards
  3. Knowledge Constructor
     Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.
  Computational Thinker (Standards for Students)
  ISTE Standards for Students
  http://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students
  http://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students#startstandards
  5. Computational Thinker
     Students develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions.
     

Hello fellow educator,

Welcome to my second blog post. The purpose of this blog post is to highlight the ways that 21st century post pandemic educators are helping to facilitate learning, enable students to construct knowledge, and create authentic products using a variety of technological tools; while at the same time ensuring that student data is not jeopardized. In this unit, I engaged with a variety of Horizon Report readings highlighting these specific aspects. As a Social studies educator, I will discuss a few that relate specifically to Social Studies education and my personal teaching journey.

In the 2021 Educause Horizon Report: Teaching and Learning Edition, the panelists speak on newly emerging technologies and practices that are now much more common in the educational field; one of them is in the field of Open Educational Resources (Pelletier et al., 2021). Open Educational Resources (OER) are resources that are developed online and are made available to students completely free and of no charge (Pelletier et al., 2021, p. 25). As I read this Horizon Report, this new trend resonated with me as an educator, and I couldn't help but feel melancholic as I recalled my first year of teaching.

Spanning back to my first year of teaching, I was newly exposed to the concept of "open educational resources". I got hired to work in an underserved community. The vast majority of my students were economically disadvantaged. That meant that most did not have the technological resources to enrich their learning. The newest 2023 Educause Horizon Report: Teaching and Learning Edition offered a bright outlook to the future of equity across communities. Their panelists concluded that there is a growing emphasis on equity and inclusion, particularly in higher educational institutions (Pelletier et al., 2023, p.8). More and more institutions are tailoring to the needs of diverse learners and are making digital resources available to all of their learners. K-12 institutions are no exception. The summer of 2020 when I got hired, my school partnered with Verizon Innovative Schools, a program offered by an organization called Digital Promise (n.d.). Digital Promise understands the importance of technology integration in education and helps provide free access to technology to economically disadvantaged youth. The first week of the 2020-2021 year, my students received access to a brand new Chromebook. Additionally, my school had also partnered with Clever, a private digital learning platform that safely integrates popular learning applications that students can access freely and securely (Application Gallery, n.d.). Within Clever, my students had access to applications like Britannica, BrainPOP, Canva, Imagine Math, and Active Classroom (to name a few). Among these, Active Classroom became a powerful resource that my students used to learn Social Studies Concepts.

At my school, we did not have social studies textbooks at our disposal. However, my students now had Chromebooks, which meant the possibilities of engaging with open educational resources were limitless. Active Classroom, a learning platform that offers lessons, teaching resources and assessments that students can engage with to learn Social Studies concepts, quickly became the platform that I incorporated in my curriculum ([Active Classroom homepage], n.d.). Active Classroom offered students the ability to engage in reading, video, image, and mapping analysis. Most importantly, it supported student and teacher inquiry; an important aspect of Social Studies instruction. Thus, students had access to a variety of learning applications or open educational resources at their disposal through their Chromebooks. According to the 2021 Educause Horizon Report, Teaching and Learning Edition, "one of the most relevant advantages of OER is increased societal equity" (Pelletier et al., p. 27). My students did not have access to learning applications prior to Verizon Innovative Schools, however, access to technology and OER dismantled that barrier and allowed my students' learning to be enriched. Additionally, my students could now create innovative digital products, part of standard 3 and 5 of the ISTE technological standards for students. One popular app that my students used to create digital products was Canva. Canva allowed my students to create digital pamphlets, storyboards, posters, timelines, content maps and much, much more ([Canva for students], n.d.). Thus students learned how to create and organize their own digital resources, a technology skill they otherwise wouldn't have been able to implement without the support of Clever. 

In the 2021 Educause Horizon Report: Information Security Edition, the panelists explain that instructional security has become an ever increasing issue in education, particularly in higher education (Kelly et al., 2021). The report generalized that the growing digital world will require more skilled professionals in the field of information security (Kelly et al., 2021, p.9). Most importantly, there will need to be a larger focus on data privacy protection. Thus, this implies that educational institutions will have to take greater care in protecting student data the more they incorporate technology in the educational process. Clever, the private digital resource learning platform puts data privacy at the forefront of their operations ([Comprehensive], n.d., "comprehensive security" section).  According to their website, they pride themselves in helping districts secure student data and are continuously investing on new tools and technologies to help schools employ high data protection. Most importantly, they hire security experts to run their systems and incorporate cloud services for optimal security. According to the 2021 Educause Horizon Report: Information Security Edition, institutions are increasingly opting for cloud - based services; and cloud based computing is estimated to grow to 89.5 billion dollar market by the year 2027 (Kelly et al., 2021, p. 10). Thus, Clever is a perfect example of a digital company that ensures that the privacy and security of students is not jeopardized by employing and perfecting their security practices. This means that students can have access to open educational resources, without having their data jeopardized. Clever is one of many platforms that schools can integrate to provide students with digital resources, with optimal security. This can be achieved when institutions acknowledge the need for more secure cloud-based software as technology advances. Precisely what the Horizon Report expects will be needed in the near future.

It is clear that technology is growing and becoming more and more prevalent in education. An awareness on the types of digital resources students can use freely and securely is of utmost importance. Technology is essentially bridging the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged youth, but although this is positive in education, the more online presence students continue to have, the more institutions will have to increase their security efforts to protect student data. 

Resources:

 [Active classroom homepage].(n.d.). Social Studies School Service. Retrieved on October 28, 2023 from https://go.socialstudies.com/active-classroom/

Application gallery (n.d.). Clever. Retrieved on October 28, 2023 from https://www.clever.com/app-gallery

[Canva for students].(n.d.). Canva.  Retrieved on October 28, 2023 from https://www.canva.com/education/students/

[Comprehensive security program]. (n.d). Clever. Retrieved on October 30, 2023 from https://www.clever.com/trust/security 

Kelly, B., McCormack, M., Reeves, J., Brooks, D.C., O-Brien, J., Corn, M., Faehl, S., Harris, E., Novik, K., Pesino, S., Romness, P. & Sawyer, G. (2021, February 16). 2021 Educause horizon report: information security edition. EDUCAUSE. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2021/2/2021-educause-horizon-report-information-security-edition

 

Pelletier, K., Brown D, M., Brooks, C., McCormack, M., Reeves, J., Arbino, N., Bozkurt, A., Crawford, S., Czerniewicz, L., Gibson, R., Linder, K., Mason, J., & Mondelli, V. (2021, April 26). 2021 Educause horizon report: teaching and learning edition. EDUCAUSE. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2021/4/2021-educause-horizon-report-teaching-and-learning-edition

 

Pelletier, K., Robert, J., Muscanell, N., McCormack, M., Reeves, J., Arbino, N., Grajek, S., Birdwell, T., Liu, D., Mandernach, J., Moore, A., Porcaro, A., Rutledge, R., & Zimmern, J. (2023, May 8). 2023 Educause horizon report teaching and learning edition. EDUCAUSE. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2023/5/2023-educause-horizon-report-teaching-and-learning-edition