October 27 - October 31, 2014

Transformational Technology in the Classroom

Transformational Technology is a way to use assistive technology in the classroom.  In our eyes, it is not a specific type of tool, more of a style of using the tool. As a grade eight teacher of students with severe learning disabilities, one of my jobs is to enhance student understanding of assistive technology.
     Over the last few days we have been talking a lot about why we are here. All of the students know there are three main reasons... three GREAT BIG reasons! First, is reading. Students are emersed in reading and we utilize many different strategies to teach reading. The second reason is self advocacy skills. Students, not just students with LDs, need to know how to get what they need. The last reason we are all here is to get better at using our technology. What does all of this have to do with transformational technology?
     If you have been reading our blog, we have been posting mainly about the different ways we use technology to our advantage. As we have been talking with and listening to, George Couros, we are trying to become "creators of digital media" rather than always being "consumers of digital media". The principal here at Sagonaska posed the question, "Could the students here at Sagonaska have completed the task without the use of their technology?" This is the driving question for transformational technology.
     Can students express their learning without their technology? If teachers OR students answers yes to this question, they are not using transformational technology. Simply put, transformational technology is a way for students to express their learning in a way that they couldn't have without the use of assistive technology. In a time when the internet makes the classroom a global learning space, is it okay to simply consume content rather than create it?

Harnessing the power of the internet.

Thank you to Anne from sagonaskaschool.blogspot.ca, Mr. Hatch from hatcherelli.wordpress.com, John Jennings, Joseph Broughton from musiceducate.blogspot.ca, and Mr. Webb from mrwebbauroa.blogspot.ca for posting some positive formative feedback to our students! We are asking for your continued feedback in the same "positive, to and try..." method for the next pieces of writing.
     If you have never left feedback for us, please be sure to read the blog post titled "Getting Help from the World". This will give you a quick and easy idea of how to positively frame your comments. We look forward to your ideas!

Thanks in advance.

What's Your "Tech Game Plan"?

As explained in an earlier post, the students in my grade 8 class at Sagonaska are encouraged to use a "Tech Game Plan". A tech game plan is simply a way for the students to present their understanding or completing a task in a way they are comfortable with. It comes from the ideas that no learner is the same and therefore there is no prescribed way, for different students, to present their knowledge to me. 

     We take a few minutes to go through new apps, accessibility features on different pieces of assistive technology each week. The students then choose how they want to manipulate their assistive technology to work for them. The prompt I use is "You use whatever you are comfortable with, as long as you can illustrate your understanding of the topic to me". As you can understand, this gets messy. To keep it clean, I almost always create a rubric with the students prior to the task. Rubrics are another great way for students to really grasp what exactly I am looking to get out of the task.

21st Century Teaching and Learning Round Table

Technology in the Classroorm

How do you use technology in your education? Do you peruse YouTube? Does your teacher use a Smart Board? Do you make presentations in PowerPoint? In grade 8 at Sagonaska we are encouraging students to use their technology to be creators! Instead of using technology to simply consume (watch a video or find information about a topic we are writing about) we want the kids to do something they would not have been able to do with out the technology.
     Here are some photos of grade 8 students editing their paragraphs. The special part about this is that all of the feedback they have received to help edit their work comes from people outside of our classroom! Some of the comments come from people we don't even know! All of this is to help illustrate to the students that learning does not just happen in a classroom, learning can happen anywhere! As the students draft and rewrite their paragraphs, I will post them again and again so you too can see the growth!

Cardboard Challenge 2014 at Sagonaska!

Check out our video from our two days of the Cardboard Challenge 2014. Thanks a lot to Mr. Mortaley for editing the video for us!

The week of October 12 through Twitter.