Monday, July 4, 2016

Leveraging Technology

I was provided the opportunity to attend the International Society for Technology in Education Conference (ISTE) this year in Denver.  This is a huge conference of over 14,000 educators coming together for the purpose of learning, sharing and leading with educational technology.  This is the second one I have been to and it was just as great as my first.


In education we tend to have a lingo all its own especially in the acronym department.  Over the past year one word that has been used and used again is “leverage”.  This term is used more commonly in ed tech circles and I have always wondered why.  I know what it literally means and that it is appropriate terminology for the discussion, but maybe there is something else going on there.  You might hear the following when it comes to devices or technology related projects, “how are you leveraging that?” or “We can leverage that by…”  In either way the word is used to show how you are taking the best advantage of the technology.


I myself am not one to hinge the success of a program on the devices.  When I go to tech conferences I go for ideas.  I then use those ideas within the boundaries of my students, staff and available resources.  When I wrote about my school’s BYOD initiative it was simply acknowledging that was the best way to help our kids be successful in the setting we have.  If I had my heart’s desire we would be 1:1 with Chromebooks and Google Classroom.  I realized working in rural districts that there is a reality that must be recognized.


In my last post I made the observation that it seems that parents will the buy an expensive bat for their kid before they even know how to use them.  I see this often in schools.  We are distracted by the shiny toys and lack leadership when it comes to implementing a true program that stimulates learning and opportunity.  Sure it looks good in the paper and social media but is there a learning outcome attached?  Can it serve as a springboard for additional learning?  How does your community benefit from this new thing?  Are there policies in place to ensure that a clear pathway is between your students and the learning outcome?  Are we leveraging the technology or the learner?


I wouldn’t ask these questions if I had not faltered myself.  Failing is learning and I should have a Ph.D. by now.  In my first run at BYOD we left some of those things out.  I think I was too excited about the larger philosophy of students living in a mobile world and we need to teach in their world.  This is not to say that philosophy is incorrect but I left out many practical items that would help student and teachers embrace it more.  We pulled back from allowing Smartphones in our first year because the student behavior factor was not taken seriously and we did not know how to respond except to dismantle the policy.  We retooled and now have a solid policy in place.  Our first full year back has been peaceful and with a few bumps we are settled in.


What we failed to realize is that in BYOD, the devices are not ours to leverage.  Our role is to show students how to leverage their devices to make them learning tools.  We are caught up in the “what ifs” and that truly slows the process towards student engagement and learning.  People at times are not willing to stumble towards this kind of leverage.  We see the cliff and the jagged edges then pull back.  Just like this illustration by @TheTechRabbi.  You can start with a plan or a device but the path towards success is rough.  We have to stay the course and have student learning as the goal.  Our comfort or fears should not be the top priority for a tech initiative.




We have to move past seeing the danger in a kid with a smartphone and show him how to use Google apps.  We have to look past our own lack of knowledge and be trained to engage the mobile/digital student.  It should be in our professional nature to reach our kids in any way we can, to the best of our ability, with their learning and development in mind.  So what are you trying to leverage in ed tech?  It might be a device, a curriculum or a philosophy but it always has to have sustained student learning and engagement in mind.

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