Earlier this month an article of mine was published in an education journal. This was a summary of how technology is currently being used in Primary Physical Education and is a lead in to a piece of research I am currently writing up on how teachers use digital technology in PE lessons. (See full article here )
More recently, I have had conversations with colleagues regarding how we do, and could use technology within our own teaching to improve student learning and engagement. It would appear, both from experience and research that a large number of practitioners use technology to present information to students within their delivery rather than to support or develop learning.
For example, one of my modules has a large number of students on it which means we didn't comfortably fit into the room allocated during the first semester. For that reason we have been moved into the lecture theatre (I taught in there last week and it was the first time that I had ever delivered anything in the lecture theatre- it was quite scary!). In order to encourage them to collate their thoughts I used Padlet- an online noticeboard, to get them to input their knowledge on a specific topic. This worked really well and it was great to see all the different answers and contributions popping up on screen as they typed. But was this improving their learning? Probably not- I could have achieved the same end with a big piece of paper and some sticky notes (although this did allow them to see each others' responses a little better perhaps).
So how can we truly use technology to improve students' learning? Or can we justify that using tech to save time means we are improving learning because it allows us to spend more time on other activities or processes within our lessons? There have been some really good examples within my research; teachers using apps to slow down video of students performing a specific skill for example. This allows individuals to better understand their technique and gives less experienced learners the time to spot weaknesses they would not otherwise. Using online quizzes to test content allows the teacher to see how well their students have understood a concept much more quickly than any other kind of written test, allowing them to go back over the content which was previously uncertain.
Impact, the journal which is linked earlier is a technology special edition this term and already the articles included within it have made me re-think how I use technology within my teaching and start to evaluate the purpose it plays. I urge anyone involved in education (or any job role in which you need to present to others) to browse the articles as there is a great deal of interesting information included within them. However the message I included in my own article remains to be my key takeaway for integrating technology into teaching; technology should be used primarily to enhance pupil interactions as this is key for improving learning. This means before adding the newest app into your teaching repertoire consider how it is supporting the learning of your pupils and not just digitising existing delivery.
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