Fusing Learning with Technology
Learning Manifesto
At the age of forty, I look back at my careers and educational experiences and reflect on how I got here. When I was in high school I was a good student. I had good grades, participated in activities, and had a job once I turned sixteen. The expectation in my family was to graduate high school and go onto college and up until the end of my senior year of high school that was my plan as well. Then came graduation and suddenly the motivated and determined student that I was once had been replaced with an aimless, drifting soul. Suddenly, I didn’t want to attend college or think much past next weekend. Two months after graduation, I found out I was pregnant and that threw another kink into my future plans. I still didn’t want to go to college, especially now that I’d have a baby, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do so I just kept waitressing. By the time I was six months pregnant I decided there was no way I was going to waitress the rest of my life and I enrolled in my local community college. I was set to start college classes a couple months after my daughter was born.
I started college in the Fall of 2001 at the age of 19 with a 5 month old baby to take care of. I took some classes on campus, but lucky for me online education was just becoming an option in my area so I was able to take some of my classes online. I used my first financial aid check to purchase a desktop computer to hook up to the dial up internet that we had at home. Needless to say, online education back then was nothing like it is today. There were no zoom meetings and the internet connection was painfully slow. I still hear that shrieking dial up sound today when I think about trying to get onto the internet on that first desktop computer.
However, the slow internet speed was not the only struggle to being an online college student. There was also the stigma attached to it back then. After earning my Associates degree that that community college, I went on and completed a Bachelors degree and two Masters degrees…all online. It wasn’t until about my first Masters degree that people stopped questioning my education. They no longer thought I was getting a “fake” degree or that I was being manipulated by institutions that were not real. Back then, at least in my area, that online education was looked upon as not a real degree. It has been interesting to watch how over the past couple decades, the outlook on online education has drastically changed. The year I started my college career online education was not respected or acknowledged by many people and then 18 years later my daughter graduated high school with 45 hours of college classes already completed, that she did online at her high school. In just that time, we went from online college education being questioned to it being normal. The year following my daughter’s high school graduation was when Covid hit the world and all education systems went online.
Online college education allowed me to get college degrees that otherwise would have been unavailable to me. As a single mom in a small town, I would have had to stop at an Associates degree since I did not have the ability to move and attend in person classes at another university. Online education opened up a world of opportunities to me and I would not be where I am today without it.
When I decided to become a teacher (a second career choice for me I found when I turned 30), I found that not only was digital learning a benefit for me as a college student, but it was a benefit for my students as well. When I was in the classroom, most of my time was spent as a special education teacher. The first year I had students in my room that ranged from grades 3-8 and I realized how the iPads benefited my students that were on different education levels. I was able to individualize their assignments, guide them to additional practice, and give them the opportunity to practice when they weren’t even in my classroom. When I switched school districts and went to my current one, we were not a 1:1 school. However, due to the way that I utilized the technology with my students, I was able to get a class set of Chromebooks and not only did my students excel in their education, but when Covid hit us, my students were prepared to work on a Chromebook at home while their peers did not all have that same experience. Now my job at our district is our district’s Technology Integration Specialist and I’m able to assist teachers in learning the digital tools available to them to assist in the classroom.
My experiences first as an online college student over the last 20+ years, then as a classroom teacher, and now as a Technology Integration Specialist is all part of what drives my passion for helping others utilize and understand the opportunities of online education.
My Why, My Passion
My “why” in believing in digital learning is to give opportunities to those that may not have them otherwise, empower them to be the best they can be, and prepare them for the world as it is now and will be in the future. As an online college student I have seen the opportunities that digital learning can provide. As a classroom teacher, I saw how digital learning can help students with struggles learn in a way they never could before. As a Technology Integration Specialist, I see how digital learning helps teachers reach more students in individualized ways than they could do otherwise.
Computers are not going away and properly utilizing digital learning will allow our teachers to improve and our students to prepare for the world they are entering into. Digital learning allows for collaboration, curiosity, creativity, and so much more to help our students learn to think in ways that are no longer just answering multiple choice questions or reading a chapter and answering questions. Through digital learning, students open their classrooms up to the world and collaborate with people all over the world.
Digital Learning Struggles
While digital learning has come a long way since I started my first online college class, I still see many struggles and concerns when it comes to digital learning. First, it appears that proper direction and training for teachers on how to use the digital tools is lacking. I saw this first in the first school district I taught at. The school purchased iPads for all staff and students, but never taught the teachers how to use them in their classroom. It wasn’t long until our administration felt as though they were being used as expensive game playing devices. Well, yeah, because the teachers didn’t know how to properly use them. This was not something that teachers were trained on when they went to college as a tool to use with the students. Using digital tools with our students is not the same as using traditional tools. Luckily, my current district when we went 1:1 with Chromebooks implemented my position which was to help guide and assist the teachers with using the new digital tools. Helping teachers utilize these new tools isn’t just a one and done thing. They need continual support, guidance, and help. Technology tools change so often that it is nearly impossible for teachers to keep up on their own.
The next struggle I see with digital learning is the mindset. While my district did see the importance of having someone to guide and train staff, we are still struggling with acceptance of the new digital tools. Some teachers are resistant because they are overwhelmed already and this seems like just “one more thing”. Some are resistant because they don’t like change in any capacity. Some are resistant because they don’t think they can do it and don’t want to look “stupid”. There are a variety of reasons why implementing digital learning is a struggle and most of it comes down to the mindset of the learner.
Another struggle with proper implementation of digital learning is that teachers sometimes forget that their teaching should not be lead with the technology or the tool, it should be lead with the learning goal. Technology is not meant to take the place of the teacher or drive the lesson, it is meant to supplement the lesson and allow for the lesson to be delivered in a way that traditional learning cannot do. It is hard for teachers, and myself at times, to remember that their first question should never be, “What can I do with digital tool A in the classroom?”, but “What do I want my students to learn from this lesson and which tool (digital or not) can help with that?”
Education Struggles
I think that there are a variety of things that can be adjusted in our education system today. However, the one that I see as one of the biggest issues is that we appear to be teaching our students how to pass state tests that are mainly multiple choice questions instead of teaching them truly how to learn and execute. When I was in the classroom my students struggled with thinking outside the box. If it was in black and white right in front of them they didn’t know what to do. They could handle multiple choice questions because they had been taught how to analyze them and narrow down their answers. But they struggled with almost anything else. I remember one time in class where I was having my students do a free write activity. I told them that I would say a word and they had to write about whatever came to mind when they heard that word. Every two minutes we would say another word and they’d write something else. The first word I saw was “pill”. They all looked at me. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know in what context I meant “pill”. They wanted to know was it a pill like medicine, was it a pill like how someone was acting, what kind of pill, what were we using it for, and so on. They needed to know all of the details before they could write about what came to mind. They felt like they couldn’t start until they knew more. I feel as though our kids don’t know how to think on their own anymore or come up with stories and things without complete directions. I believe that digital learning can help assist with that. With digital learning tools our students can collaborate with others, create posters and videos, explore areas around the world, and so much more. I think that digital learning can shift our teaching from multiple choice questions to exploration of the world around us.
Digital learning is not the answer to everything and should never be used as the only tool. However, when teachers are properly supported and utilize it in with learning as the main goal, I believe that digital learning can give opportunities and experiences to our students that were never an opportunity in the past.