Module 3 - Transforming Collaboration & Communication

Stop, Collaborate, and Listen

1. In using technology in our classrooms with our students, we can empower them to learn better, and empower ourselves to teach better. A good way to strive for this is to make sure we implement the ISTE Educator Standards. 
2. These Standards are grouped into two categories -"How teachers can be a catalyst for learning (collaborator, designer, facilitator, analyst) and how teachers can be an empowered professional (learner, leader, citizen)."  
3. Collaboration and communication are also important values to impart to our students, and while sometimes it's difficult to help students collaborate outside their specific subject, it's important in the 21st century to make sure our students are ready for the real world.
4. In terms of the ISTE Standards, there are two collaborative titles:
1. Creative Communicator:  Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.
2. Global Collaborator:  Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally.
5. Writing with technology opens up a huge amount of collaboration, in terms of applications like Google Drive, which helps share writing across accounts for everyone to edit and write on the same document.
6. Following the same vein of technological collaboration, creating video and photo projects students work on together help students immerse themselves in the technology for the assignment, while they also collaborate more effectively because of it.
7. More collaborative technology assignments include:
1. Content-building a wiki
2. Communication using Learning Management Systems
3. Collaborative Brainstorming
8. Collaboration is not always the best situation in a classroom - problems can arise and personalities can clash. As an educator, you have to be prepared to be a mediator as well as a leader of the collaboration.
9. These collaborations also don't always have to be just between your students and you. They can also be with the rest of the world: other classrooms, other students, and even experts in fields you want your students to learn.
10. Student collaboration is key in any classroom. Technology enhances that collaboration to a higher level, but doesn't come without its challenges it brings.

Module 2 - Deep Digital Age Learning

Deep Learning, not Just Surface Learning

1. Some technological learning activities look good on the surface, but actually, they require no actual Deep Learning - something that supports knowledge construction and higher order thinking skills.
2. While some substitution methods are acceptable in terms of technological learning, technology can be used in the "transformative deep end".
3. This is a good difference between SAMR and the ISTE Education Standards - SAMR is more focused on the modification the technology is doing, while the ISTE "challenges educators to empower their learners, to "rethink traditional approaches" and to "prepare students to drive their own learning" (Link)
4. Examples of this deeper learning fall into many categories, including Project-based, Inquiry-based, and Cooperative Learning. None of these styles require technology, but incorporating it can change how these styles work.
5. Empowered Learner: Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences.
6. To make sure we get meaningful learning, while also including technology to prepare students, a good framework to follow from Howland, Jonassen, and Marra has five parts:
1. Active Learning - Manipulative/Observant
2. Intentional Learning - Goal Directed
3. Authentic Learning - Complex/Contextualized
4. Cooperative Learning - Collaborative/Conversational
5. Constructive Learning - Articulative/Reflective
7. Each of these learning styles are unique, and they work together to create that deep learning with technology.

Module 1 - Technological Innovation in Schools

Technology Isn't a "Magic Bullet"

1. Technology, over the past 30 years, has changed the climate of classroom learning dramatically. 
2. With the comeuppance of this technology, educators found different ways to incorporate it into learning, including Blended Learning and 1:1 Learning.
3. Today's students have grown up with technology, so it's a natural extension of their environments. 
4. However, some students may not be able to use this technology in their education correctly. This is either due to a Digital Divide, or the student not having access in the school setting, or a Digital Use Divide, or the way the technology is used.
5. Many different models have been designed to help educators think about the ways that they use technology, one of them being SAMR - The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition Model. 
6. SAMR can "help teachers increase their awareness of how they are using technology and to design intentional uses of technology targeting the modification or redefinition models."
7. Many educators are calling for development of these technological skills to help them prepare for their future that inevitably include technology. 
8. There are many standards that have been produced to help this initiative, including ones for Students, for Teachers, and for Local, STate, and National Leaders. 
9. With all of these pushes, technology of course has been adopted, but it's seen sometimes as a "magic bullet" that automatically helps any classroom.
10. We, as educators, have to know how to implement technology to make sure it actually doesn't hinder our classroom, and we have to know how to use it correctly.