Page 17 - THE Journal, March 2017

Mendoza, was for the arts to begin riding the momentum generated by the use of technology in classrooms. She pointed to Cathy Hunt, a visual art teacher and author in Australia as an example. Hunt “has
done a lot around students creating with different art apps on their iPads, and really making those connections with the arts, but digitizing it,” said Mendoza. The issue of arts education “is actually making a better connection between what we view as the arts — which is often an old school view of it, like painting and drawing or pottery — and digital art.”
Blended Learning
The mix of face-to-face and
online instruction — whether it’s called blended or hybrid — is one of those categories of ed tech usage that has become part of the fabric of classroom practice. Therefore, as a topic of conversation among educators, the curiosity and thrill has lessened, asserted Common Sense’s Knutson. “Depending on how you define ‘blended,’ it may be going as strong as ever. But in terms of the number of people using and talking about that term, I think it’s getting cooler,” he said.
A similar challenge is surfacing for other concepts, such as personalized learning and project-based learning, Knutson said. “As we’re seeing the rapid growth and innovation in digital tools for learning, we’re struggling to find ways to describe what they are and what they do. We’re dealing with new technologies, which often bring us to new types of pedagogies.”
Trying to define the terms for tech-infused instruction troubles P21’s Ross too. “We
use such generic terms, anybody can say anything about what they’re doing with it,” he said. For that reason, “there needs to be standards or essential elements to define what blended means or personalized means, because now it means basically everything.”
Without the proper understanding of the concepts and without the knowledge about how to use technology to do blended or personalized learning, Ross added, promotion of concepts such as blended can become an “overwhelming burden”
for teachers. They need to understand the basics and how to pull it off practically, he said. “iNACOL and other organizations are trying to define what it means. But in most classrooms it means that the teacher gets some technology in the room and integrates it in a continuum of effectiveness from ‘not effective at all’ to ‘really effective.’ But that depends on the skills of the teacher. That’s
a professional development issue for everybody.”
Dian Schaffhauser is a senior contributing editor for 1105 Media’s education publications THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at dian@dischaffhauser.com or on Twitter @schaffhauser.
OUR EXPERTS
Karen Cator is the president and CEO of Digital Promise, a nonprofit focused on transforming education “through technology, innovation and research.” Formerly, she was the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.
Jeff Knutson is the senior manager of education content for Common Sense Media Education, a nonprofit that supports educators navigating “the worlds of digital media and technology.” Prior to that he was a high school teacher in language arts and English language learning.
Keith Krueger is CEO of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), a nonprofit that works with K–12 school system technology leaders in North America.
Kelly Mendoza manages the professional development program for Common Sense Media’s education programs with a specialization in digital literacy and citizenship. She was also one of the original developers of Common Sense’s K–12 “Digital Literacy & Citizenship” curriculum. Prior to that she produced online education resources at the Media Education Lab through Temple University.
Sean Nank is a math teacher at Oceanside High School in California and a member of the faculty at both California State University San Marcos and American College of Education, where he teaches master’s level education courses. He also serves as a facilitator for LearnZillion, a company that produces digital curriculum and offers professional support to educators making the transition to digital instruction.
Tom Redmon is a fourth-grade teacher for Hamilton School District No. 3 in Montana and a facilitator for LearnZillion.
David Ross is the CEO of the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21),
a nonprofit that delivers educational consulting services to states through collaborations with practitioners from education, business and government. Previously, he served as senior director for the Buck Institute for Education, which provides professional development focused on project-based learning.
Cheryl Williams currently serves as the interim CEO for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), a nonprofit that supports educators in transforming their instructional practices for a “connected world.” Previously, she was the executive director of the Learning First Alliance.
OUR METHODOLOGY
THE Journal invited nearly two dozen education leaders to tell us where they thought specific technologies would land on the ed tech thermometer in the coming year. We received 16 responses and interviewed eight of those experts to tell us how they came to their conclusions. Those are the same thoughts we share here. Want to take the survey yourself? Register your opinions on this publicly available Google Form at http://bit.ly/2jeQknj. We’ll make the results available in the future.
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