Technology in My Placement: a Handful of Reflections

For our EDUC 504: Teaching with Technology course, our professors recently tasked us with submitting a survey about our placement schools' array of computer and multimedia technology available for students' and teachers' use. The options included in-classroom items such as laptops, a desktop computer, digital photo and video cameras, smartboards, LCD projector, and more. The survey also inquired as to whether these types of equipment could be reserved for use during class time.

Before filling out this survey, I was fairly convinced that my placement school had it pretty well set in terms of being well equipped, technologically speaking. But out of all of the options under the question "What technology is available in your classroom?" only one applied to my placement school: the LCD projector. This is the case for all of our school district's classrooms, as far as I'm aware, and the installation of these projectors took place only very recently. As for the question of what equipment is available for reservation during class time, I responded that our school does have a few laptop carts available for rental.

Our in-class discussion on the similarities and differences among each of our placement schools was both illuminating and frustrating. Other members of my cohort who were in other school districts reported vastly different scenarios. One fellow intern, placed in a suburban school district with a median income higher than that of the city I'm placed in, reported a much higher presence of in-class tools available for use. Another intern, whose placement school is located in a neighboring city with a much lower median income, reported that her school had almost none of the technology mentioned in the survey.

It's a shame. We've been talking so much about the implications of bring-your-own-device policies as those which, at the level of the individual student, have the potential to contribute to the achievement gap a la the Matthew effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect), but we haven't given much conversation to the idea that this phenomenon occurs on the level of the school district and its neighboring districts. By how much is the economic vitality of affluent communities increasing each year because students who have had the benefit of advanced learning tools graduate and begin contributing in meaningful ways to their community? And by how much is the economic vitality of not-so-affluent communities decreasing each year by the inverse principle? I feel that such an inequality can only be remedied by funding at the national level or from private sponsors. How else can we change things? The disparity in school technology among different cities and towns is one of the smaller pieces in this country's growing puzzle of inequalities, but this puzzle -- like all jigsaws -- needs every piece in order to be complete.

Thoughts are welcome.

Podcast & Co.

On October 3, a night that already feels like it happened four weeks ago, four of my teaching-intern colleagues gave a presentation and mini-lesson on using audio-related tools for student learning. Podcasting was the talk's central focus, and the group provided valuable insight as to what teachers of various disciplines are incorporating into their 'casts, as well as the tools and methods that these teachers use to create their aural, mp3-able learning shows. One of these tools, Vocaroo (http://vocaroo.com/), allows any user to record a sound clip via a computer's or mobile's microphone, save it to a permalink, and then share that file via the permalink itself, email, Facebook, or Twitter. Heck of a tool, right?

Absolutely right. It's quick, simple, accessible, and anonymous, provided that students and teachers are careful to not record confidential information. There is no login required, so neither students nor teachers are tasked with signing up or registering a throw-away email address in order to do so. The design is refreshing, too (look at that cute little robot!) and simple enough that even those without opposable thumbs can use it.

My cat has started blogging recently, so this will be welcome news to her.

Beyond the obvious, this tool has incredibly valuable uses for students and teachers. Here are a couple that recently came to mind:

• Vocaroo is useful for formative reading assessments. Such assessments are key to consider at the beginning of the year, when teachers are getting to know their students and their strengths for the first time. Hitherto, our ability to assess our students' oral reading has been severely impacted by the fact that there are only so many hours and minutes in the school day. But for assessments that require little more than the student reading a given passage out loud, students can use Vocaroo at any time and share the resulting clip with the assessing teacher to review privately and at a convenient time. While coding and reviewing these clips is still a bit time-consuming, it's much less taxing than arranging a quiet time for reading assessment for thirty young folks who have busy schedules of their own.
• Vocaroo is useful as a method of collecting small homework assignments. True, we could ask students to read chapters four and five and then write a paragraph about what they've read, but chances are excellent that the substance of their response (and their opinion of the assignment) will be moreso if the teacher asks instead that they record thirty quality seconds of summary of and response to the reading. I don't propose that aural clips should subsume the role of regular written assignments, of course -- we need to require that our kids write and write often. But let's not forget those standards of learning that deal with speaking, which is just as important a skill as putting pen to paper. In this way, Vocaroo can be a solution to teaching students how to speak clearly, consistently, and fluently about ideas they have interacted with.

Vocaroo is terrific for these reasons and more as a way of generating quick, continuous takes of sound. 

Another tool that our audio-tool presenters spoke of was Audacity, a free, lightweight recording suite that allows for more substantial files and some basic sound editing. One saliently useful aspect of a tool like Audacity is that it can generate responses to more substantial summative assessments. Many students might enjoy this type of assessment, but it's especially valuable to students who have a writing disability. Aural assessment, rather than written, can give such students a way to interact with concepts and ideas in a way that is substantially more comfortable to them. Rather than sweating the mechanics of crafting prose, these students can get at the heart of the matter and generate ideas more fluently. This, again, is also valuable for assessing and critiquing students' speaking skills in a fashion that won't put shy or socially anxious teens in public-speaking situations of great distress. 

We have the tools, folks -- let's use them to help our kids become adults who can share their ideas fluently, critically, and soundly.