My Educational Philosophy

Paul Horton

Online Teaching Philosophy & Framework

CURR 5171

                I don’t have a ton of experience teaching, but my exposure to multiple schools in D11 has shown me that there seems to be a belief that “the right digital tools” can miraculously bring every student to at-grade level or higher. To be honest, it seems the district is chasing program after program, swapping them out if they do not produce immediate results. It feels very much like the media marketing we’ve all been exposed to since childhood…the newest X will solve all your problems. I think our society has stopped asking critical questions about many of these digital tools and instead embraced the “newest, shiniest” platform as a fix to our problems.

                You could say that I am skeptical of the true benefit of much of the technology and digital platforms that have entered the educational space. There is no doubt that technology has provided unprecedented access to information, but access and comprehension or mastery are entirely different things. Is it great that we don’t have to waste so much time going to the library, digging through catalogs and indexes to try to find valuable information we can use? Of course. However, how much time is still wasted learning programs and platforms that still do not deliver? I don’t know if there’s a quantifiable study that compares how much time average adults and students spend filtering through masses of digital material to achieve goals that once required very little time. You could look at it like this: in the pre-internet age libraries were the equivalent of an oasis in the desert. This oasis, however, was a massive body of water, so big you couldn’t see end standing at the banks. The water represented the information you needed, but it was up to you to figure out how to build the ship and navigate to the spot on the water that held the information you needed. In today’s age, your laptop has access to all of this information at your fingertips. However, you must learn to filter through a system that wants to track and trace you, to monetize your preferences, and to provide you only with information that fits your biases. I’m exaggerating a little, but bear with me. Search engines and programs all grab the information they either want you to have or think you need based on an algorithm. Now, you may be getting water, but it may be so polluted that it’s not very drinkable.

                Is technology bad? No, it is not inherently bad or good. It can be used as a tool to further your knowledge, but the onus is on you to understand how best to employ it for your needs. My teaching philosophy is that technology should serve learning and lessons should be based around the learning objective and not the technology that can be employed.

                Let’s take a look at access to books. It is generally much cheaper to have a Chromebook or iPad with access to thousands of books than it is to buy, store, and maintain those books. Personally, I moved from purchasing real books to digital ones that I read on my iPad almost a decade ago. I would much rather read a book on my iPad than I would a hard copy? Why? Many reasons: it always holds my place, I can access tools like highlights, notes, and references. Sometimes there’s great digital maps or videos embedded in the digital copy. However, do I remember the material the same way I did when I would lay on the floor or in a comfy chair? I don’t think so – there are certain components to a real book that can enhance your memory. How the paper feels in your hands, the smell of it, the way light penetrates a page when you turn it. This isn’t just anecdotal. In 2018, Pablo Delgado conducted an analysis using more than 17,000 participants and found that those who read print had increased reader comprehension than those who read digital (Delgado et al, 2018). Similarly, Alexander Skulmowski studied “cognitive off-loading” and found that when people rely on external sources like digital technology, they store in their memory how they accessed the information instead of maintaining the information internally (Skulmoski, 2023). Neither of these studies mean technology is bad, they just provide us with an understanding of how technology use affects our learning.

                We can use the TPACK framework to dissect this issue. Mishra and Koehler wrote a framework that argues effective technological integration requires teachers to consider the content knowledge, their own pedagogical knowledge, and both theirs and their students’ technological knowledge together when creating a lesson (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). I don’t want to use a tool that cannot cover the content to the level I know my students need. Nor do I want to use a tool that I don’t understand myself. Lastly, if my students cannot intuitively use the technology, then it cannot serve its purpose of adding value to my lesson plan. However, in some instances it can be tremendously valuable. Take some of the science lessons I taught in 4th Grade at McAuliffe. I did not have access to the laboratory resources for my students to run certain experiments. However, Carolina Sciences and another program the school used allowed the students to assemble and run these experiments on their Chromebook, therefor adding real value to their implementation.

                I have mixed examples from when I taught 3rd Grade at Jackson last year. Using real-world manipulatives helped students in math work much more than any digital tool. I also found students turned in better writing assignments when they used a pencil and paper to brainstorm, list, rough draft, and then write their final paper than if they just wrote it on their Chromebook. However, I also found two great digital tools I used in my classroom. The first one, ClassDojo, gave me a way to create an immediate and visible behavioral reinforcement system. I connected points they earned in the app to rewards they actually wanted and saw a massive improvement in classroom behaviors. The students and their parents could access the app, change their avatar, and see their points at any time. Another example was IXL. I was not happy as IXL and ClasssDojo were handed to us (teachers) on a Wednesday afternoon and told to have them implemented by Friday (with no instruction on either program). However, IXL addressed one of the hardest elements within a lesson…how do we differentiate for multiple levels of learning? IXL allows the teacher to assign skills to students in groups or individually, making it very easy to differentiate CKLA and Eureka Math. Creating leaderboards also motivated many of my students to work on IXL at home and enhance their in-classroom learning. Both of these programs also implement Universal Design for Learning and the Community of Inquiry framework to connect the learning to the students directly. Both apps allowed communication between the student, teacher, and parents to best assist the student. They also employed social interactions and mini-competitions that allowed students to learn from each other.

                Overall, I don’t see technology as inherently beneficial to education. It is only beneficial when it actually improves either a teacher’s delivery of a lesson or aids a student in understanding the lesson. I have seen examples of technology hampering learning as well as enhancing learning. I believe any teacher should focus on creating a learning environment in which technology is used deliberately, when it is assessed that doing so can help the students learn.

Bot Check: I confirm this submission is my own original work and represents my own writing and thinking. I used generative AI (ChatGPT) to brainstorm my initial ideas as well as an aid to find the sources of the studies I remembered seeing about how technology impacts reading and understanding.

References

Delgado, P., Vargas, C., Ackerman, R., & Salmerón, L. (2018). Don’t throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension. Educational Research Review, 25, 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.09.003

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017–1054. https://rediie.cl/wp-content/uploads/Mishra-Koehler.pdf

Skulmowski, A. (2023). The cognitive architecture of digital externalization. Educational Psychology Review, 35, Article 101. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09818-1