ISTE Standard 3 -- Modeling and Faciliating the Incorporation of Current and Emerging Digitals Tools into the Classroom.

Modeling and Facilitating the Incorporation of Current and Emerging Digital Tools into the Classroom to Prepare Students for the Future

EDTC 6433

ISTE Standard 3

Triggering Question:  Since we live in a global and digital society, how can I model and facilitate the incorporation of current and emerging digital tools into our social studies curriculum?

I picked this question because in our school district our social studies department is often asked to try out digital tools in our classes.  This practice began because social studies is the only department that doesn’t have state testing scores directly attached to teachers, therefore we had more flexibility in how we presented the material.  Also, since all students take a social studies class it provides an opportunity for all students to learn and use digital tools that are available.   

Another reason, this question came to my mind is due to our upcoming research project in 7th grade social studies and I am a digital immigrant.  This is a new research project for all of us and we are providing choices.  One of the choices is how the final project will be presented.  Student will be given the choice of using technology or with paper or pencil.  This has caused us to research digital tools that are available for our students to use and how we are going to model this tools since some are new to us as well.

Exploration

As I was reading through the assigned articles, I couldn’t help but think that they were geared more toward digital natives and I am a digital immigrant.  I also realized how many digital tools I do use in my daily life in the classroom and it is much more than what I do in my personal life which is the opposite of what it said about digital native teachers.

The article “Cross-Reference of Online Teaching”  confirmed the belief of why we teach digital tools is to help our students  “become more marketable for the careers they will be competing of in the future, many of which are yet to be created”(p. 22).  In social studies our main goal is to teach our students how to research, evaluate resources, and draw conclusions, not necessarily the content, so they can transfer those skills to what they will be doing in the future. So by incorporating the teaching of current and emerging tools, we are also providing opportunities for them to learn digital tools that hopefully they will be able to use in their future learning and careers.

As I looked for articles to help me incorporate digital tools into my classroom,  I found an article entitled “Five Tips for Incorporating New Technology in the Classroom” which provided discussed using our  best teaching practices when teaching other educators about using technology.  I believe we can use those same best practices to teach students how to use technology.  For example, we need to remember that our students come with different backgrounds and knowledge in regard to technology, so having them work with a group of mixed abilities is good for all students.  Those who need extra help can get it readily from those in the group and those who provide the help deepen their knowledge.  We also need to provide ongoing opportunities for students to use the digital tools we have taught so they can deepen their learning and see how their learning can be transferred to other subjects and therefore to their future choices.  And, most importantly, we need to provide a culture in our classrooms where it is okay to take risks and make mistakes, since we learn from these experiences.

Although I liked the checklist provided in the chapter entitled “Explorating the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Elementary and Secondary Teachers” provided, it made me wonder what does this look like and sound like in the classroom.   While looking for my answer I found another article called, “Know the ISTE Standards . T3: Model Digital Age Learning”.  I thought it did a good job of giving concrete examples of how technology can be used to teach students digital tools and citizenship while aligning with the standards.  The chart below shows how we can apply this in our upcoming unit on SE Asian cultures as we model looking for images that show events or innovations that affected the way people lived the students culture of choice:

ITSE STANDARD	How it will be modeled by teachers
Model digital age work and learning. Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society.	The teacher models a presentation and annotated time line that shows the how life was affected in Imperial China by events and innovations.  Next, the teacher models a web search to select an image, then demonstrates how to use a digital drawing program to practice layering and overlay. Students conduct their own web searches to select a series of images, then use the digital tool to create one image from the series of layered images.  The students then post the images for their culture onto their presentation or annotated timeline
A. Demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations.	The teacher provides examples of digital artwork and shows how it can replicated in their presentation or annotated timeline
b. Collaborate with students, peers, parents and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation.	The students share their work by pasting a URL into a google doc for peer sharing and critiquing.
C.  Communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents and peers using a variety of digital age media and formats.	Both the teacher and the students use google classroom and google docs  to communicate and share.
D.  Model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate and use information resources to support research and learning.	The teacher models appropriate web searching skills and proper use of copyrighted imagery/information.  Teachers will be providing an ongoing bibliography.  Students are required to provide a bibliography and will be working on this as they research their culture of choice.

The article that Erin Cook shared, “What Digital Literacy Looks Like in Classroom”, also gave some resources to teach digital citizenship that I look forward to incorporating more as I model how to appropriately use and cite resources with my students during this project.   Although, I teach a digital citizenship at the beginning of the year, this article along with the one I found reminded me how important just like with other things we teach that we need to continue to provide this education throughout the year.

REFLECTION

Although, I have gathered resources to facilitating and model the incorporation of digital tools into our social studies curriculum, I need to continue to gather digital tools to be used in the classroom.  Some of the new tools I have heard about through discussions in our class  and the edcamp conference this weekend that I want to learn more about and hopefully incorporate are padlet.com, book creator, menti.com, and google addons.  I also plan on looking on freetech4teachers website that Professor Wicks referenced in the hangout this week.  My exploration also has reminded me that my goal as a teacher is to give my students the tools they need to be future ready and successful in their future.

References

Crowley, B. (2016, April 29). What digital literacy looks like in a classroom. Retrieved November 05,

2017, from https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/10/29/ctq_crowley_digitalliteracy.html

Crompton, H. (n.d.). Know the ISTE standards•T 3: Model digital age learning. Retrieved November
05, 2017, from https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=109

Kennadee, K. (n.d.). Cross-Reference of online teaching. In Distance Learning (2nd ed., Vol. 7, pp.

21-28).

Stanfield, S. (2013). Five tips for incorporating new technology in the classroom. Learning & Leading

With Technology, 41(4), 34-35.

Wen, J., & Shih, W. (n.d.). Explorating the information literacy competency standards for elementary

and secondary teachers. In Computers and Education (pp. 787 - 806).