SESSION ABSTRACT

Online teaching has finally made its way through! And digital technology is attempting to become teachers’ best friend. But for that relationship to prosper and become strong and meaningful, they need to get along.

In this talk, I will be he helping participants inform their decision on the choice of digital tools that will, hopefully, complement their teaching but always reminding them that before technology comes pedagogy. And I will walk my talk through some hands-on activities using some of these tools and tapping on some theory supporting my choices.

I will start by considering the current situation due to COVID-19 worldwide and how this has made us shift to online teaching 100%, which is not even blended learning, and how teachers had to reframe their methods of instruction overnight. I will invite them to reflect on the many things we have accomplished in this context and lead them to conclude that technology would be useless without a sound pedagogical background to inform the use of a certain tool or to justify the choice of it.

In order to do so, I will be presenting one model for technology integration (The PIC-RAT Model, Kimmons, 2018) as a possible background so as how technology should be used.

Participants will be invited to see how this model works through a series of scenarios for them to decide how the model has been used.

If time allows, participants will participate very actively in some practical activities where they will be using three possible tools: Edpuzzle, Mentimeter and Wordwall.

I will conclude with three quotes on how technology is effective if there is solid pedagogy behind it.