Janet Chow, the ed tech guru of SD41 skyped into our class today to share with us her learnings about how to take ed tech to the next level. 

For her an important part of learning is the purposeful creation of learning environments, and how we can incorporate educational technology into those spaces. When we do this we transition from using technology to consume to using technology to create, an important step in any process.

Once we are in this transition state is when we can begin to embed assessment for learning into our learning goals and environments. We don’t want to plan a lesson, we want to plan an experience, because when we are able to do this it will create lasting memories, and therefor learnings in our students.

She demonstrated this to us today through her own fire starter activity. We, as teacher candidates, had to get together and use a variety of craft supplies to create a depiction of our stories as educators, where we are now, to where we are going. 

We had a fantastic brainstorming and creating process that resulted in meaningful depictions of where we are at in our learning and understanding processes, even though it was created out of pipe cleaner and pom-poms.

The real take away from all of this is that ed tech is not a lesson that we teach to the student, but rather a tool that we can embed within our lesson that we can use to open new avenues of learning.

So the only thing left to ask is… Have we been looking at tools as an end instead of a means, and if so, how do we flip the script?