Kirsten Thompson is a Brandon University graduate. She was a classroom teacher but now she assists teachers with technology in Mountain View School Division.
During her presentation, Kirsten touched upon how to use technology to make your life easier and tasks faster so that you have more face to face time with your students. Kirsten is active on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok and YouTube. She uses these accounts to model how social media can be used in the classroom.
Kirsten also talks about a Hierarchy Mindset vs. an Ecosystem Mindset. The Hierarchy Mindset is the idea that either humans or technology are going to be higher up on some sort of chain. The Ecosystem Mindset is what should be adopted into the classroom. Since we already use the term "Classroom Ecosystem", it's an easy concept to apply. Essentially, technology has a place or a niche within an existing system, and so do we. Educators and technology each play an important and unique role within the classroom ecosystem.
In an ecosystem approach, the effort is to see what each component does best. In other words, teachers need to find their niche doing things they do better than technology. - Zhao, 2016So what are my niches within my environment?* I think that it is important for me to consider what I bring to the table as an educator that technology may not. Here's a few I came up with:
- Personal experiences, stories and perspectives
- Interpersonal relationship skills
- Ability to care for and empathize
- Classroom management techniques
*My environment was two 6th grade classes and one 8th grade class all in French Immersion. I hope to end up teaching in the middle years stream.
Other important niches human educators fill:
- Relationships
- Content development
- Social emotional learning
- Small group instruction
- Transfer inspiration
- Inquiry support
- Differentiation
- Motivation
- Summative assessment
So what aspects of my teaching could be replaced by technology?
- Non subjective assessment
- Translation/definition/vocabulary/conjugation
- Instruction reminders
- Giving spelling words
- Video resources
- Curation
- Agenda
- Instructions
- Content
- Multimedia
- Large group instruction
- Formative assessment
Thanks to Kirsten for taking the time to come speak to our class and thank you for reading!
-Mme. Lamont
Very nice post Ellen!
ReplyDeleteI really like how you extended human niches into multiple domains of the classroom. Your list is able to cover a wide range of needs within our classrooms. As a result, you would reach more students than focusing on only fulfilling one niche or domain area. Small group instruction and social-emotional learning are both vital but are not the same. I think it is important to realize the different needs we may meet for different students.
ReplyDeleteAs somebody who doesn't speak another language (beyond a few phrases) it was great to hear about translation work using Google in classrooms as it may be helpful for EAL students to utilize the same technological resources.
I think you did a great job of picking out personal traits and aspects that teachers bring into the classroom. I think that the ability to care for and empathize is extremely important in supporting all students, but especially those without solid support systems at home. Thank you for your thoughts! :)
ReplyDeleteVery good post, you did a great job sharing what this presentation was all about!
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