Evolution

              I remember when I was maybe four or five years into teaching (2008??) and one of our main goals that year as part of our evaluation was to show that we were teaching our kids 21^st century skills.   The day my administrator came in to observe me I was showing my students how to put a document on blackboard so they could work on it at home and at school which, by the way, was a very laborious process compared to the Google Docs of today!  The goal was simply convenience.  I wanted the kids to be able to keep typing their documents at home without me having to email them to their parents (yep, that was the only option at the time aside from a jump drive which the kids did not have).  Anyway, the feedback from my professor was fantastic: “You are REALLY getting these kids ready for the 21^st century!” she wrote.  I will never forget it.  I was happy but also confused.  Even then I realized I wasn’t really giving them a skill they would need in a dozen years when they graduated from college and entered the work force.  I certainly wasn’t teaching them a skill due to any sort of design or with any thought as to how it would enrich or further the curriculum or their understanding.  It was just a simple skill in isolation, nothing more than that. 

              Good news:  I have evolved😊.  This program as well as just exposure over the years to a growing amount of technology has gotten me to realize that we have to THINK about the technology tools we are using as part of designing instruction.  Is the tool going to facilitate a deeper understanding of the content?   I have realized affordance analysis is so important to answer this question.  I mentioned it in another post but it really is the crux of affordance analysis for me: Just because a tool is available to us doesn’t mean we should use it and further, just because we teach kids something that is on the computer or classified as “digital” (like my Blackboard document example earlier), does not mean we are using technology tools to facilitate learning.

              Affordance analysis is not easy though.  For me it takes time and practice.  Last semester I feel like I really had to tap into the brain cells to get it right but it is getting easier.   In contrast to 2008, I struggle with just how many technology options are available for us to use with kids.  It’s overwhelming.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an online database where we could type in the lesson topic, the age of the kids and the learning outcome and the perfect tech tool would just pop up??