Thing 28: Emerging Tech: Scanning the Horizon
“The NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in schools”
As I read this report I reflected about what and how I teach it. I saw what a great impact technology can have in school in a very clearly written framework. The trends, challenges and new and developing technologies were extremely informative that I am going to share parts of this with my faculty. The following are thoughts and ideas I had as I read the Horizon Report.
When students have the opportunity to collaborate with other students and also have immediate teacher feedback to their research, the quality of the student work improves. As a district we are currently working on our technology goals. The use of Google Classroom has created many more opportunities for learning. It also forces students to take charge of their learning. Google Classrooms have everything students need to complete assignments. Basically there are no excuses like “the dog ate my homework” because it is completed in the cloud. There has been so much transition in the past five years with the technology in our district ranging from a small amount of PC labs to classroom sets of Chrome Books using cloud technology.
Students that are actively learning hopefully are making connections to the real world through what ever type of technology they are using. They still need much guidance because searching Google may give them a quick answer, but, they need to be able to answer questions at a deeper level. We have the technology but we need to revisit our inquiry based goals and plan of action to achieve these goals in order to have that shift to a higher and deeper level of understanding. We need to include the technology that the students are familiar with such as smart phones, Chrome Books and tablets to help them go beyond their own comfort level as well as our own as educators. New apps and programs are popping up daily. We need to lead our students into inquiry based learning by introducing them to research strategies of internet research. By this I simply mean that there are programs students can use for note taking and citing resources through Noodle Tools. They can use productivity tools like Evernote for organizing both text and images or they can use Pocket from their browser to save web pages for research. I do use Pocket with my students. When they Pocket a web page to read later they don’t have to remember what it was because they didn’t write it down. It will pull up the web page so they can remember to cite it.
There are so many different online tools for students to make learning more available to students. My high school is still in the transition of becoming a Google school. I use it for emailing students about activities and over due books. I also use it to get students input on book purchasing. The possibilities are endless when we can grab the attention of our students and have them decide what they want to learn. Also, I have had many students teach me about programs that range from creating music to designing an architectural drawing of a floor plan for their self created business for Economic Class. The trend to keep making student learning relevant needs to be constantly re-evaluated. I have used programs for years like Google Labs, Extra Normal, Animoto, and others only to find out they are either no longer in existence or do not meet the needs of productivity for my students. That is the driving force for me to keep up with technology trends.
In my May Library Tech Smore I am including links to Emerging Technologies
What’s Next? Keeping up With Trends and Emerging Technology
http://www.21things4teachers.net/21-things/emerging-technologies/ and The NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in schools http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2014-nmc-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf. I am also to include some apps and programs to help teachers with student achievement.
Also in my May Tech Smore I included a brief video that is available for teacher and student use on PhotoPeach. I just did a quick one for my staff. Here is the link http://photopeach.com/album/13tf50j
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