ETP-Assessing Technology
"There is WiFi on Mt Everest! There are ZERO excuses for our students to not have WiFi access in their schools and homes."
-Tom Murray
As an educator, it is important to understand the various lenses you can use to observe and assess the use of technology to transform and enhance teaching, learning and leading. These frameworks serve as aids to campus administrators who may not understand what to look for in the classroom when technology is present.
For curriculum support staff, including teachers, each provides a different way of understanding how technology scaffolds instruction.
Three Approaches
There are various approaches you can take to assess the effect of technology. One suggestion is to NOT link it to student achievement. Instead, focus on using technology as a way to enhance the effectiveness of professionals' work (e.g. teaching, leading) and productivity for both K-12 and adults. That aside, consider these three approaches to assessing technology in your school system.
1- Technology Audit
Ready to embark on a fresh initiative that affects every student and staff member? Maybe, you want to launch Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT), put Chromebooks or iPads in the hands of every student at the middle school. There are several problems that will pop up, but one of the most difficult (aside from shifting attitudes, behaviors of human beings) and expensive is finding out your network isn't up to your vision.
Before you do anything, make sure your technology infrastructure is ready to go, that all your ecosystems are matched. If not, you are in for a turbulent journey.
2- Clarity Brightbytes Survey
Educational leaders can access research-driven recommendations to allocate their technology resources for maximum impact. The module helps enhance technology learning experiences and drive student achievement with insight into research-based data analysis, access to engaging role-specific reports, and actionable next steps.
3-Education Frameworks
Here is the short list of educational frameworks that have grown popular in the educational technology space.
Click on the title/acronym for each to learn more about it.
T3 Framework (Dr. Sonny Magana)
The T3 Framework is designed to tighten up the process of integrating technology into teaching and learning by providing a clearer, more precise, and actionable framework to guide teachers and leaders in self-assessing current uses of technology, setting professional growth goals, and achieving continuously higher levels of mastery.
Sonny Magana has made a significant contribution to innovation in education with his important book, Disruptive Classroom Technologies, and the T3 Framework. There have been 161 meta-analyses on various aspects of computers in education – from 10,226 studies, and the average effect is d =.34 – and this effect has not changed over the past 50 years despite phenomenal changes in the technology.
A major reason for this lack of impact is most technological interventions do not change the dominant “tell and practice” teaching model. Moving beyond translation and transforming current practice to transcendent uses of technology is clearly where we should go.
We need to build collaborative communities of students solving problems, explaining to others (regardless of ability) and using the social media aspects of technology to change classroom conversations from monologue to dialogue, increasing student impact questions, and allowing errors to be stated and dealt with – this can be so transcendental.
This is the core of Magana’s claims, and indeed this is how we’ll see technology really make the difference we’re after!
John Hattie, Laureate Professor, Deputy Dean of MGSE, Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute, Melbourne Graduate School of Education University of Melbourne, Victoria,Australia ;Chair, Board of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership; Associate Director of the ARC-SRI: Science of Learning Research Centre: http://www.slrc.org.au
