Embedded Files
Just In Time Lessons
As technology in the classroom develops, a way to develop the learning technology so that it becomes an integral part of both classroom instruction and online learning becomes possible as collaboration becomes a stronger part of electronic materials for classroom instruction. Electronic textbooks and associated testing materials are helpful, but do not provide the interactive and epistemically engaging aspects of learning group participation that can be offered through adequate use of technology. Jefferson County Public Schools (2013) in Jefferson County, Colorado; offered a technology plan which was incredibly inclusive and cognizant of the need for teachers to be able to include e-learning materials, blended instruction, and flipped classroom instruction. As time went on, other agendas took hold of the technology marketplace and an adequate implementation of that technology plan was never achieved. When thinking about what access to the internet and electronic resources can become in the classroom, I wrote this excerpt from a class on classroom ethics and technology in instruction (Hixson, 2015):
"The cover of the Jefferson County Public Schools 2013-2015 Technology Plan (2013), cites a quote improperly which says '’These are just technologies. Using them does not make you modern, smart, moral, wise, fair, or decent. It just makes you able to communicate, compete, and collaborate farther and faster’ –The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman'' (p. I). I own a copy of Friedman’s (2005) work, and search as I might I was not able to find this quotation published anywhere in the work. I thought that was peculiar because I was pulling an improperly cited quote directly off of the cover of a document designed by education administrators who were referring to the plan for technology use in the classroom. I performed an internet search for the exact quote using an internet browser, and I located a later and revised version of Friedman’s (2007) work and I was able to purchase an electronic copy of the expanded version. It was at this time that I discovered that Friedman (2007) was referring to a remark about technological determinism, or the idea that given technology as a tool people will inevitably use it for the purposes of communal advancement and collaboration in a way that unifies or in the author’s terms ‘Flattens’ the world through communication. Friedman was actually saying that it is entirely possible that people will use technology in a way that is not in the context of academic, scientific, or social integration; instead the technology has many confounding variables in terms of the application of the technology. This, in a time when Jefferson County Schools is in a tumult over the advancement of technology specifically for accountability reasons through automatic mass testing, instead of the application of technology for the advancement of learning and collaboration." (p. 2)
This process of locating an internet source, establishing it's credibility, and applying it to a lesson in a collaborative setting during a classroom discussion is an ideal example of how the internet can contribute to learning in the classroom; where resources are easily accessed, assessed, and applied in a lesson.
I found that during my instruction of this principle to teachers in the area, that many teachers were unfamiliar with the proper citations of materials and often had questions about the background knowledge needed to understand American Psychological Association (APA) standards for establishing credibility and citing work. The APA (2010) style guidelines establish a standard for citing many kinds of materials. The premise I taught in this instance that is a part of the following just in time lessons was that if a source could be cited well, providing at least most of the information needed for an accurate citation, it carried more credibility than other internet sources. Still, many educators found that the just-in-time lessons on this page required more thorough background instruction in terms of becoming familiar with research methods and literature. To mitigate this I found that in my future endeavors I may need to focus with individual students who are seeking to be educators in democratic settings, about the process of peer review and academic citation. Otherwise, the just in time lessons provided were demonstrated to be an adequate at-a-glance resource for understanding technology and ethics in the classroom as well as copyright restrictions and guidelines without the need to focus specifically on those requirements intensively.
Lastly these just-in-time resources are created based on a classroom framework that if the Jefferson County Schools (2013) Technology Plan were able to be implemented, perhaps with the assistance of a non-government organization like APSTR as demonstrated on this page, may help to foster classroom environments that nurture communities of inquiry in the classroom environment as a part of social and epistemic engagement that utilize collaboration, blended learning, and flipped instruction. I've previously published the ground-level framework for classrooms that would be capable of hosting collaborative software in a way that cites social and epistemic engagement as priorities for communities of inquiry learning (Hixson, 2014).
What follows are the charts developed for such a teaching environment, left-clicking on each chart will download it's full-sized version, and the charts are free to use with creative commons citations.
APA (2010). Concise rules of APA style (6th ed). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Hixson, S. (2014, November 17). Community of inquiry: Facilitating social presence
[Assignment for a course on adult education]. School of Education, University of Phoenix.
Retreived from: http://such411.blogspot.com/2014/11/post-34-classrooms.html
Hixson, S. (2015, August 17). Critical thinking application I: Plans and procedures
[Coursework for a class on ethics and technology in education
OTL-504-1]. School of Education, Colorado State University Global Campus.
Jefferson County Public Schools (2013). Jefferson County public schools 2013-2015 technology
plan. Retrieved from:
What follows here is an example of the expectations which would be displayed in a classroom that hosted a communities of inquiry learning system, an e-classroom build on the initial ground-level framework that I created for integrating technology in the classroom in a way that facilitates social and cognitive presence in a research-based way shown to nurture epistemic engagement and group collaboration (Hixson, 2014). This is an example of how current ethical and social issues presented by bringing technology to the classroom in a way that is designed for textbook publishing and automated testing, can be solved through instead creating a collaborative social environment.
Hixson, S. (2014, November 17). Community of inquiry: Facilitating social presence
[Assignment for a course on adult education]. School of Education, University of Phoenix.
Retreived from: http://such411.blogspot.com/2014/11/post-34-classrooms.html
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