Adventures in EdTech

If you have read some of my prior posts, I have spent plenty of time establishing the fact that I am not a major social media user, that I have cut back my time spent on various apps, and that I am, in general, much more of a taker than a giver when it comes to social media. With so much of the focus on negative aspects of social media, I think sometimes it is important to be reminded that there are a lot of positive uses when it comes to social media as well. Plus, I think almost all teachers are familiar with the concept of how we frame things to students, and why this is so important. I can remember a professional development session I had in which I was first introduced to the negativity bias , which in essence states that we as humans have a much stronger reaction and clearer memory when it comes to things we experience as negatives over positives. We will dwell on past mistakes or rude comments far more than we will a piece of praise or a great accomplishment. Similarly, how we f...

In one of my earlier blog posts, I did some back-of-the-napkin math on just how much time we are spending online, and as a result, how many ads we are consuming every day. I framed that information based on internet use, and while spending more time on the internet might have streamlined the ability to take in ideas and advertisements, this is not a new human experience. The internet is far from the only form of media people can engage with (think radio, television, print, etc.)-it just happens to be the most common flavor for many in contemporary society. If we look at media as a complete idea, between the internet (and all the ways we can access it), TV, radio, print, etc., our engagement with media stretches far beyond the 6 hours per day I wrote about before. As this article from Statista states, estimates were made that by 2020, Americans would spend 13.5 hours per day engaging with some sort of media. This article breaks down the difference between digital and traditional media...

In an earlier post, I wrote about a personal data mine that I conducted in thinking about my digital tattoo-the imprint that I have left on the digital world, and how much information about me was truly and readily available on the internet. As the concept of digital tattoos denote, what we post and interact with online can be very difficult to erase, and almost always will leave traces (as with a tattoo, fully removing one’s past actions online can be challenging and time-consuming). I wanted to do a little bit more digging, and was turned onto this Digital Tattoo project website from the University of British Columbia. The site contains a variety of different resources, from quizzes about which aspects of one’s digital tattoo they seek to address or learn more about, to videos and articles and even teaching resources related to that creation and maintenance of a digital tattoo. Albeit a beginner’s reflection, here is what I found: Digital Tattoo Basics Overall, the articles and tuto...

  When I made the decision to start an educational technology program, I did it because I felt like it was something that would continue to shape my career moving forward, and that technology related to education was something I was aware of, and had a growing familiarity with. At the same time, I felt consistently inadequate in terms of being able to envision the possibilities educational technology offered, and worried that I would never really be able to ‘catch up’ to all of the options that were out there. Having now completed the first class in that program, I can say that my eyes have been opened, mostly to the fact that the sheer breadth of resources makes it difficult to feel like an ‘expert’, but that just seeking out the opportunity to learn is what is most important. My experience with educational technology has been mainly driven by the last few years working in a 1-1 environment (in two different buildings/districts). The majority of my focus was originally on finding ...