Where are the digital technology role models for my students?

A couple of years ago I did some research on my students (what most academics do at some point in their careers!) into their digital literacies that formed the basis of a conference paper at AARE – click here for more information. My students are mostly young, mostly straight out of school or coming out of a gap year or a false start with a different area of study. Most of them are pretty handy with devices – at least for communicating with each other, for Googling things (funny how to Google is now a verb!) and a few other things. Some (minority) are very handy with their devices for a range of other things. These days all of them are confident that whatever the technology, they can work it out. Even my older, mature age students come around pretty quickly to working stuff out fairly easily.

But most find it difficult to build a bridge between their personal use and their professional use of technology. They have limited experience in using digital technologies in their own schooling – mostly Googling things, typing up assignments and the odd PowerPoint presentation. The majority of them also don’t see much interesting use of digital technologies when they go out to school on professional experience placements. Not much of a basis to build upon.

Each year I teach a couple of digital technologies elective courses/subjects, and at the beginning of each course I ask the students to blog about their previous experiences with digital technologies when they’ve been in schools on professional practice. And every year I get the same answers – they see children being asked to type up their good copy on the computer (what is this saying about the value being placed on handwritten or hand produced work compared to computer generated products, not to mention asking young children to do the same thing twice- where is the learning in that!), and to ‘play’ on (insert pre-populated edutainment product here) if they finish their real work (computer as busy-work, time-filler not real work!), and they see the teacher using the interactive whiteboards (not the students). And disappointingly, some of my colleagues fail to inspire them with new ways of integrating digital technologies in other parts of their teacher education, although fortunately that is slowly changing. Not exactly a source of inspiration for their own teaching!

My current class of 25 students have spent the last few weeks blogging about their own experiences with digital technologies as their first assignment this semester. I must say, the enthusiasm they display is heartening. They are, without exception, convinced that knowing how to integrate digital technologies is essential for them as aspiring teachers and that they need to ‘re-evaluate our identity as a teacher due to the ever-changing teaching environment’. They are considering the need to relinquish some of the control teachers traditionally hold, and are exploring more student-centred approaches that reflect and build on the technological literacies their students bring to school. One student observed that:

  ICT has changed the way children socialise, interact with their peers and their whole world…except for school! So yes we need to consider what captures their interest and inspires them to want to learn at school.

But they despair at the lack of innovation they have seen in how teachers in schools are using digital technologies. Stories like the following were typical in the blogs:

 I have seen very limited digital technology being used, and often when it is I feel that it is a token effort to somehow try to incorporate the use of ICT, as if to tick it off as being done. Whilst on placement the only form of digital technology I witnessed was computers/iPads etc being used a babysitting tool... for example, groups of students used ridiculous math websites, but by the time they had logged on, the session was over and it was time to pack up. 

Fortunately, a few students observed more positive ways of incorporating digital technologies into classrooms, particularly where access to devices wasn’t a constraint. In one example, students were inspired by viewing Inanimate Alice, a digital novel, and were asked to ‘write’ the next episode:

students were self motivated and totally captivated with the learning task. The students were expected to come up with a punchy storyline whilst still incorporating all the elements of a narrative. They used their ICT skills beyond their comfort zones to produce some magnificent work! The outcome was the most authentic, valuable and creative work that surpassed my expectation!

In another example, students were using iPads to talk about their texts:

In literacy students would record/film themselves on their iPads discuss about the text they were working on, rather than sitting in their seat and writing it down in their literacy books which is how it is done majority of the time. In sharing time, the students would mirror their recording on the interactive white board to share their work with the rest of the class. They were really keen to show their work and produced amazing things.

I wonder how familiar this story is with other teacher educators who are trying to instill understandings of the role of digital technologies in the classroom? How many of you are hearing the same stories from your pre-service teachers about the limited ways they have observed digital technologies being used? I also wonder how we can move beyond this story, which hasn’t changed much in my experience of teaching teachers over the last ten years. How can I ensure that my students see some of the wonderful, amazing and inspirational technology-enriched teaching that I know happens in some classrooms, in some schools? I guess that’s my job!! To inspire them, to provide examples they can follow but also to give them opportunities to create their own ideas about authentic and meaningful uses of technology.

Next month, I am taking this same group of 25 students to a nearby primary school to work in the classrooms with teachers and students to try new things with digital technologies – well, new to my students and new to the school. I want them to have an opportunity to connect theory - the ideas and the applications we’ve reflected on, talked about and tried in our uni classes – to practice in a real classroom, with real teachers and students. I wonder what will happen??

A starting point...

A blank page is always terrifying. I never know where to start. So, deep breath and off I go.

Why create a new blog? Good question. Aren't there enough people self-indulgently blogging about their work, their lives and any miscellaneous idea that pops into their heads? We live in a networked world, one where at the click of a button or the swipe of a finger we can tell the world our troubles. Without any filters we can sometimes share too much. But just as there exists negativity in some circles about the over-sharing that happens in social media, there are others who recognise the power of social media to make connections. I guess that is at the heart of this new blog of mine - a desire to make connections with colleagues around the world on areas of common interest.

So what's this blog going to be about. Well, I'm an academic at an Australian university, helping to prepare the next generation of teachers, for both primary/elementary and, to a lesser extent these days, secondary schools. My main focus, but not the only one, is on the integration of digital technologies (what we used to call ICT) into the classroom. My teaching and research centres on questions of what does effective integration of digital technologies look like? How can we better prepare new teachers in integrating digital technologies in ways that move beyond a ‘tick the box’ approach? How can I harness digital technologies in my own teaching so that I am modeling approaches that could work for my students in their own classrooms? So this blog is about that journey – sharing the approaches I take to my own teaching, the experiences of my students and some of the projects and research I participate in that relate to teaching teachers about and with digital technologies. I hope that whoever reads this blog talks to me about my work and about their own work, so that ideas can flourish, develop, become enriched.