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Purpose
This website is to help educators in their journey to understanding and implementing educational technology into their classrooms. I hope this website can serve as a resource to rely on when first learning about incorporating such technology.
Philosophy
As a philosophy, I believe that educational technology is at the core of a well-engaged, well-connected, and well adjusted classroom in the 21st century. It is imperative to include educational technology in the classroom as a facilitator of learning, as it is a key element in increasing both teaching and student learning outcomes, motivating students, and empowering them to take control of their own learning.
Equitable Use
When appropriately implemented, technology can play a big role in increasing equity in the classroom. Equitable use in the classroom regarding technology is the pursuit of creating and maintaining an environment and system through the inclusion of educational technology that therefore enables all students, regardless of their background, race, economic status, language, gender, learning style, disability, or learning capability, to access resources and instructional material/supports they need to learn on the same academic playing field as their peers.
This technology could take on many forms, but at its core enables and empowers learning, which is why it is so important. Coupled with equitable access to things like internet connection and increased broadband capacity, educational technology allows children to access instructional material outside of the classroom, enables teachers to differentiate instruction to cater to a wider range of learning needs not previously capable, and creates easily trackable and analyzable data that can be used to make data-based and well-informed decisions.
Ethical Use
With the integration of educational technology, it is imperative to protect more than just student records and general information. As an educator, ethical use in the classroom regarding educational technology is both ensuring safe and appropriate learning environments for students whether online content is accessed by students inside or outside the classroom, protecting students' private information, as well as actively teaching our students what ethical use of technology looks like by teaching them about the implications of our actions online - including topics such as plagiarism and illegal downloading.
Ethical use in the classroom regarding technology is important because it protects both student and teacher while enabling students to utilize technology to its fullest potential - once we know how to protect our students and teach them how to ethically use technology, we will be facilitating higher learning opportunities for our children.
Below are links to a few laws protecting the rights and responsibilities of children:
Social Responsibility
With great technology comes great social responsibility. Social responsibility in the classroom regarding educational technology means "helping students learn to appreciate, respect, and cultivate a positive digital footprint" (Macbury, 2019). For teachers, this means that we need to actively teach our students how to access, leverage, search, evaluate, communicate and reflect while using digital tools in the classroom.
With the digital realm forever growing larger and students possessing the power to digitally imprint on a global scale, it is important that we instill a sense of social responsibility in our students so they may be prepared to responsibly navigate educational technology as well-adjusted digital citizens.
A model I like to use when integrating technology and using it in the classroom is the THINK model. With this model, we can teach ourselves and our students how to THINK before searching, posting, or engaging with the internet.
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