Edtech for the K-12 Classroom, Second Edition: ISTE Readings on How, When and Why to Use Technology in the K–12 Classroom

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Teaching and Learning with Edtech

In This Chapter:

ISTE Certified Educator Shares Four Tips for Teaching with Tech

Use Research-Based Approaches to Choose Edtech Apps

Focus on UDL When Using Classroom Technology

Four Tips for Creating Awesome Classroom Videos

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (EDTECH) IS A BROAD TERM that can sometimes be intimidating. Often we find a tool that works, and we use that tool all of the time, whether or not it is the best tool for the students we have or the task at hand. Sometimes we get excited and use what I call edtech for the sake of edtech. When working with students, we want to ensure they are exposed to opportunities to use the four Cs of digital age skills: critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Using edtech also allows you to use UDL principles and personalized learning.

One of the ISTE Standards for Educators states that Educators design authentic, learner-driven activities and environments that recognize and accommodate learner variability. Too often, we find a tool that we really want to use with students and try to fit our standards to the tool. The articles in this chapter will guide you through a process to start with your objectives and standards, and then find a tool that fits your needs.

— Moriah Walker (@WalkerWizardsPJ), innovation specialist at Plains Junior School, Liberty Township, Ohio

ARTICLE 1

ISTE Certified Educator Shares Four Tips for Teaching with Tech

By Nicole Krueger

Two weeks before school started, the iPads arrived. Sixth-grade English teacher Laurie Guyon, who had never touched the device before, suddenly found herself in the midst of an exploratory 1:1 pilot. Her mission: give it a try and see what happens.

So she did. The first year, she and her students began to learn coding, along with essay writing. Before long, they were programming robots to act out the hero’s journey.

I kind of fell in love with it, she says. From the first moment we did something on the iPad, I saw a higher level of engagement from students. There was a deeper learning that I started to see happen. I felt like it opened up more of the world and allowed some opportunities I would never have tried in the classroom.

Having pioneered her own tech integration journey, Guyon serves as a guide for other New York teachers who were thrust into a massive exploratory pilot in spring 2019: making the shift to online learning. As assistant coordinator for model schools at the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex Board of Cooperative Educational Services in New York, she provides professional learning for teachers in thirty-one districts across the state, impacting nearly 40,000 students.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Guyon hosted virtual office hours to give teachers a place where they could drop in, ask questions, and try things out. As teachers with varying technology comfort levels struggle to take their lessons online, she helps shepherd them through the basics of getting their classrooms connected and into discussions about best practices for teaching with technology.

I feel like I’m ready for a lot of them to move past level one, especially since the pandemic, she says. Where do we go from here? Now that we understand how to make a Google Slide, what are we going to do with it, and how will it impact students? I want to get to where students are using technology to create, collaborate, and communicate—to do things in the classroom that really engage them in the learning process.

Guyon draws upon ISTE Standards to help propel teachers past the beginning stages of tech integration. In March 2019, she decided to pursue ISTE Certification not just for herself, but for a cohort of more than forty interested educators. She hosted the training and set up a Slack channel for support as they made their way through the self-paced online work. Now she uses what she learned to help teachers examine their digital lessons and activities through different lenses to determine the best way to achieve their learning goals.

I get excited about teachers trying new things, she says. It gives me a window into a lot of different classrooms. I see how different teachers run their classrooms, and I see the best practices emerge as we start to understand what works well. It fuels me, makes me want to try something new.

As someone who has used technology to teach both students and teachers, Guyon has developed the following best practices of her own:

1. Learn alongside your students.

When Guyon first led her sixth graders through Hour of Code, she had never written a line of code in her life. They learned it together—and discovered a hidden expert in the room. An English language learner who rarely spoke to anyone became the day’s hero as he walked around the room and helped his peers troubleshoot their code.

By becoming a co-learner, teachers empower students to take charge of their own learning while also modeling the habits of a lifelong learner. For educators who feel outside of their depth with technology, simply saying, Let’s learn it together, can lead to powerful experiences.

A lot of times it’s just a matter of getting out of the student’s way.

2. Think in mini lessons.

Students don’t get better at something by listening to a teacher deliver a lesson. The real learning happens once they start practicing the skill. Breaking subjects down into ten-minute mini lessons followed by an activity or practice period helps make learning more digestible and creates an opportunity to try out new information right away.

3. Make connections.

Learning to code may not seem like an obvious fit for an English classroom, but Guyon quickly saw its value—and didn’t hesitate to point it out to her students.

Kids never want to rewrite and fix their work, but when they have a robot on the floor and it’s not moving, they’re going to rewrite until they get it right. Now they see the purpose of editing—as long as you bridge that correlation for them. I’d tell them to think of it like code, and then it was a lot easier to get them to edit their essays.

4. Allow time to explore.

When teaching a new technology to either students or fellow educators, Guyon doesn’t deliver much instruction beyond how to log in. Then she sets them free to explore. Once they’ve had time to play around with the app and figure out how it works, she starts building the lesson from there.

A lot of times, it’s just a matter of getting out of the student’s way, she says.

This is an updated version of a post originally published on June 24, 2020.

Nicole Krueger is a freelance writer and journalist with a passion for finding out what makes learners tick.

ARTICLE 2

Use Research-Based Approaches to Choose Edtech Apps

By Dr. Liz Kolb

Evaluating and choosing educational applications for school learning has often been compared to the Wild, Wild West. Yet selecting the just right app for teaching and learning to meet learning targets is truly a science and should be done carefully, using evidence-based decision-making grounded in the learning sciences.

My twenty-plus years in education and education technology have allowed me to develop a cadre of resources and tools to evaluate an educational application based on research and the science of learning, rather than choosing tools that are shiny, popular, or that feel good. Beyond the classroom, I have also found that I need to support parents and caregivers in understanding how to use research-supported strategies with educational apps at home. Here’s a look at the resources I use to select and evaluate educational apps using the learning sciences.

Tools for Evaluating an Educational App

Triple E Evaluation Rubric for Educational Applications (bit.ly/3dcqNoV) This rubric is derived from the Triple E Framework Rubric for lesson design with technology tools. The Triple E Framework has been found to be valid and reliable for designing lessons with technology to support learning outcomes. The Educational Applications rubric brings together many research-based pieces on how to evaluate educational applications into one simple-to-follow rubric.

What Works Clearinghouse (ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc) Since an educational application’s website often has biased research, it is important to find unbiased research. In order to know if valid and reliable studies exist on an educational application, the What Works Clearinghouse should be your first stop! The clearinghouse is run by the US Department of Education and critically examines any research on educational applications to see if the research is valid, reliable, and unbiased.

AIMS-E Tool (bit.ly/3dbX6nK) If you are looking at educational apps for younger children, I highly recommend the AIMS-E tool created by Screensense. This is a great rubric for determining if an application will support the pedagogy of learning for children ages two to about six.

KidMap (joinkidmap.org/digchecklist) It is important to consider diversity and equity when evaluating a digital tool for learning. Kidmap has created an easy-to-use checklist for educators to make sure their new application is inclusive and equitable.

Digital Promise Product Certification (productcertifications.digitalpromise.org) Digital Promise has recently developed a certification process for educational applications to make sure they regularly address the learning sciences, support diverse learners, and ground product design in evidence-based research. Tools that have earned the certification are worth a look!

iKeepsafe Data Privacy Certification (ikeepsafe.org/products) The iKeepSafe website has compiled a list of educational applications that are FERPA-, CSPC-, and COPPA-compliant. This allows a school to know which educational applications have built-in student privacy security measures.

Tools to Help Pilot Edtech Apps

Rapid Cycle Evaluation (bit.ly/3d9pMy0) Mathematica developed this very useful tool that allows teachers to easily create a pilot study on an educational application with data-driven outcomes.

Digital Promise Edtech Pilot Framework (edtech.digitalpromise.org) Digital Promise has developed a process to help districts determine if a new digital tool meets the needs of teachers and students.

A Tool to Help Educators Provide Strategies for Parents and Caregivers

Tap, Click, and Read (tapclickread.org/takeaction) The Tap, Click, and Read website, developed by Michael Levine and Lisa Guernsey, is a wonderful resource for educators and parents. The website focuses on how young children and their caregivers can best engage with media and educational applications.

This is an updated version of a post originally published on October 21, 2021.

Liz Kolb (@lkolb) is a clinical associate professor of edtech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and is the author of four ISTE books, including the best-selling Learning First, Technology Second (2017) and Learning First, Technology Second in Practice (2020).

ARTICLE 3

Focus on UDL When Using Classroom Technology

By Jennifer Snelling

Educator Chris Bugaj remembers when his daughter was learning about insects and the environment as a second grader. One day, the assistant principal came to school dressed in a beekeeper’s outfit. He told the students he was an amateur beekeeper and asked for their help saving his bees because they were dying.

Bugaj, author of The New Assistive Tech: Make Learning Awesome for All, recalls that his daughter came home that day ready to save those bees. She and her fellow students did their research and picked a project that was appropriate to their skills and abilities. Some made posters about planting clover, others made verbal presentations on pesticides, and a few recorded podcasts with an entomologist.

Flexibility was an integral part of the project because all students were able to use their individual talents to solve a problem. They were able to research by reading books, listening to information using a text-to-speech app, or searching online using a program displaying the words with lots of white space to make it easier to read.

Contrast this with the more typical way of approaching inclusion: accommodation.

The instruction usually begins with something like asking students to turn to a certain page in a book, already putting kids with dyslexia and other visual impairments at a disadvantage. Often, a student with a disability may be physically in the classroom, but seated at the back table with an aide. While the rest of the class works on the assignments, the aide adapts the lesson for this student.

Accommodation is not really about authentic inclusion, says Bugaj, but rather a way of getting their inclusion numbers up. Instead, imagine if they can use technology to research in whatever way works for them, as well as present that knowledge in a way that highlights their abilities. We need to challenge teachers and administrators to think about authentic inclusion, to think about design instead of accommodations.

If you design your classroom to meet everyone’s needs, anyone can participate.

What Bugaj is describing is Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The traditional model of inclusion identifies students based on labels or diagnoses and makes accommodations. UDL, on the other hand, starts with acknowledging the variability we all have in learning preferences and motivation.

Why not design classrooms and lessons that allow for flexibility in the approach to learning and method of demonstrating that learning? Isn’t that truly an equal opportunity for success?

UDL has three principles:

1. Multiple means of representation, meaning that information is offered in more than one format, such as video or hands-on learning, in addition to textbooks.

2. Flexibility in action and expression, meaning kids have multiple ways to interact with the material and demonstrate knowledge, such as an oral presentation instead of a pen-and-paper test.

3. Multiple ways to tap into student passions. Students can choose from assignments that are relevant to their lives.

The bee project is an excellent example.

If these principles sound familiar, it’s because they’re reflected in the Empowered Learner Standard in the ISTE Standards for Students.

If you design your classroom to meet everyone’s needs, anyone can participate, Bugaj says. "I look at where we were twenty years ago. Whereas before we had to fight to get one computer for one kid, now we’re living with a plethora of technology and are on the cusp of changing