Week 8 - reflection

The world of technology is growing and changing everyday, and it can seem like difficult to navigate. The 21st century is very dependent on technology of many different styles, and what are educators doing to prepare students to enter into a world of this magnitude of technology? 

The Ontario curriculum has recently added coding and programming components stating at grade one. I was very surprised to hear that it was starting that young, but upon further research I noticed that it scaffolds programming in a logical way. The curriculum starts to introduce language and uses coding in an ‘unplugged’ manner. The unplugged side of coding, I think is very important as it builds the foundation of effective communication. The coding aspect gets very specific, and to communicate effectively instructions have to be given exactly, in order to get the desired result. If the user is not able to write these instructions correctly they will not be able to communicate to the computer what they desire. The introduction of this at a young age is ideal as it is a foundational tool that is needed throughout all learning. 

In my post secondary experience, I have taken many classes that have revolved around using technology to solve math problems, as well as learning how to incorporate technology into the classroom. There are many benefits to using technology in various fields, but there is still many concerns of how it will affect the students learning. The use of technology has been seen as failing to teach the basics, or the worry is always that the students will become reliant on the technology to complete tasks. The thing that people miss out on is how many other doors using technology opens. The technology takes away the rigours computations the students would have to take a lot of time to complete. This opens questions up to further the inquiry approach to understanding topics. There was a video shown of a school, with a lot of resources and access, that had various uses of technology. The students were able to communicate what problems they were solving, how they were trying to do so and they were using all of the right languages. One example that stood out to me was the one student who was experimenting with the construction of bridges and how various forces affected their bridge. The language she was using was very accurate, and I was shocked as I learned those concepts very late in my high school career. This is a perfect example of how students can steer way from the strict math and develop their conceptual understandings. The use of an inquiry approach lets students develop better connections to the learning, and has a design based approach to learning. The elements of design based learning develops skills such as hacking, tinkering, remixing, experimenting and play. 

I believe that the most important aspect of using technology is incorporating play. The use of play in technology allows the students to engage at their own pace while also exploring using their own previous knowledge. This creates a higher engagement with the students, as they are simultaneously exploring and learning about concepts. The aspect of play gives a more fluid approach to learning. It is not a black and white approach that is the common view of many STEM related subjects. Often people see STEM as a memorization, step by step field, where the field has many real world, complex applications. The technology can aid students to see these wide range of applications while analyzing and learning from them. 

The Four P’s of creative learning also shows the value in using technology in the classroom. The first, being projects, refers to the engagement levels of users when they are contributing ideas and time to meaningful projects. The next is peers, which refers to the idea that when learning in an environment that users can share ideas and build off of each other. The program scratch offers a great use of audience as it is a public space that all projects can be shared. Scratch also has a remix function that allows for new users to modify codes from other people. The third concept is passion, and it refers to the enthusiasm that users have when they are working on projects they care about. They are more likely to persist through challenges and learn more because they are engaged. I have had experiences with teachers who did not offer me a helping hand when I was first learning to code, and it left me feeling very discouraged to complete the assignments. I had many challenges and got very stressed out when doing these projects and felt no drive, but there was a couple assignments that were topics I was interested in learning about. These projects I completed so much faster because I had the passion behind it, and to this day these projects are where I learned the most from. Lastly, play which refers to the playful experimentation of testing codes, debugging, creating boundaries, investigating and more. As I mentioned before this is one of the most important concepts in coding as it fuels all of the other P’s of creative learning. Without the use of play, users will be less inclined in having a meaningful connection to the work they are doing. If the users become discouraged then they will not be motivated to learn as much. I had a wonderful opportunity to be able to teach a coding lesson to a grade seven class. My partner and I were very adamant about letting the students have an opportunity to play with the program to learn and have a good experience with it. The students that normally did not stay engaged, were solving the problem for the longest time. They were given the opportunity to see what the program was about to spark interest first, then they engaged in the problem which in turn, created a meaningful project. 

The use of technology needs to be introduced to prepare students with the skills they need in the future. They need to learn how to design, and problem solve to have the adaptability to enter any working field they desire.