A
humorous instructor of mine back in high school wasn't a huge fan of taking her
class down to the school computer lab; so to get around our school's technology
policy, our teacher joked that since books, pen and paper were technically
technology, we were in fact using technology all the time. While this was
obviously a little bit tongue-and-cheek, it's true, really: even modern
technology is so diverse and can be applied in so many different situations and
classrooms. My learning partner is a chef's instructor at a cooking school; I
have no formal, professional classroom instruction under my belt, but am
writing about the education of students with special needs (e.g. students with
physical or cognitive disabilities). Therefore, when we selected the theme of
"technology in the classroom," we agreed to write about our own
subject matter as I wasn't sure what technology in these fields could possibly
have in common. I believe we both were under the impression that “technology in
the classroom” would remain an extremely loose theme, but that our fields would
have completely different reasons for technology use; and, similarly, that the
roles we play as instructors would be completely different.
Of
course, I shouldn't have been so skeptical. Throughout the conferencing
experience, it became clear that our results are nearly identical. Technology
is an incredibly powerful force in the classroom, and benefits and empowers all
kinds of people in many diverse educational settings.
Jonathan
found that technology works great in a cooking school. In many cases, a picture
is worth a thousand words, and computers and iPads greatly illustrate this
adage. Jonathan described how students can watch videos of culinary techniques,
which can obviously be paused, re-wound or replayed as needed. It is easy to
see why this multisensory approach would work better than trying to jot down
directions all the time or look at paper diagrams. Of course, you can't pause a
video to ask the computer a question, so this hardly minimizes the role
instructors play. Instructors can, however, feel freer to provide a
self-directed learning approach to their classes, helping out as needed.
This
is certainly true of assistive technology as well, which does not teach any
specific subject matter, but can help out with its comprehension and
application. Professional AT educators and mainstream teachers alike can often
use a similar self-directed learning approach: granting a certain amount of latitude
to students in terms of the pace they are comfortable in learning and utilizing
technology in the classroom. When I discussed the article “Assessing
Adult Student Reactions to Assistive Technology in Writing Instruction” by Julie Muellet, Eileen
Wood, Jen Hunt, and Jacqueline Specht, I described this self-directed learning
approach in action: when provided with a dozen different types of special
education technology, students self-selected which products they were most
comfortable with, and eventually gained the skills to help their peers and only
call upon a tutor as a last resort.
If
I were a professional in the AT industry, I might offer students guided
training programs to learn how to use their technology, but allow power users
to skip the training if they don't feel it's necessary. As a mainstream
classroom teacher, I might give a student with a print disability wide discretion
about how he wants to direct the learning experience to suit his needs (e.g.
whether he is more comfortable recording my lectures in audio format, or
perhaps bringing a laptop or iPad into the class to take notes that way). As a
person whose idea of cooking involves throwing some meat into a pan and placing
it into the oven, I didn’t know the first thing about cooking school—but it’s
great to know that technology allows many different kinds of instructors to play
similar roles. This was the most valuable information I learned from my
partner.
The
conferencing experience was certainly a step outside my comfort zone, given
that my learning partner and I have never met in person, and had to arrange to
meet totally independently rather than relying on structured "group
time" in the classroom. Nevertheless, in this age of globalization and
efficiency, this is a very important skill to have.
References
Mueller,
Julie; Wood, Eileen; Hunt, Jen; Specht, Jacqueline (2009). Assessing Adult
Student Reactions to Assistive Technology in Writing Instruction. Adult Basic
Education and Literacy Journal Spring 2009, Vol. 3 Issue 1, 13-23. Retrieved from http://cclsw2.vcc.ca:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=38216954&site=ehost-live
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