Technology -an integral role in my learning design, or just a fancy extra?

Reading through the three vignettes in week 3, has helped me to reflect upon my own use of ICTs during my practical block in a year four classroom. I felt inspired when reading about the e-learning that occurred in the prep/ year one classroom. I loved how this learning experience was so unique and showed how rich learning can be when ICTs play an integral role in the learning. Throughout my prac I was so excited when I saw this big interactive whiteboard in the classroom, as I had never seen one before. I have heard of all of the wonderful things that they can be used for, and was determined to use it as often as I could. In reality I did not have any training to use this great resource and therefore it was mostly used by me as a large tv screen, a tool mostly used for playing video and audio clips.

At the time I thought that this was great, I incorporated the online MyPlace resource as part of a unit on Indigenous culture and lifestyle. This resource was highly effective and the students were completely engaged –as they interacted with characters from the hardcopy ‘MyPlace book’ that we were reading in class, and watched clips that represented particular decades in time.

Now after reading these three vignettes, along with the first part of this week’s materials I able to see that whilst the use of ICTs was highly effective in this instance in terms of student engagement, it was not the great achievment that I originally though as I classified this as I can now see that the technology was not integral to the learning. I was merely using this resource as a means to present the information to the students in a different way. Could this learning have occurred without the use of the interactive whiteboard? I know that the answer to this question is yes and therefore this had made me aware of the fact that effective incorporation of digital technologies into the classroom involves more than just presenting information in different ways, rather it is more importantly about using them to achieve learning experiences that could not occur without ICTs, and that teach the students how to use these tools. This has reminded me of TPCK and that it is not just about incorporating technology into the classroom, rather it is learning how to use the tools effectively to support the teaching of specific content.