She recalls that when she first began attending educational workshops she always thought, "How can this help my school and students?" Now, she can relate to the importance to the answer of this question. Prois says that as an editor now she must think in much broader terms and research the newest education ideas and who they affect.
At a recent conference, Prois asked some students if they used the iPad apps for Shakespeare or NASA in their classrooms. Their response shocked her. They stated, "Oh no, our school is much more academic than that." This comment forced her to think deeply about how a teacher can discern which education apps are bets suited for the classroom and which just "look like Angry Birds."
In this contemplation, she realized that we often emphasize the importance of teaching our students media literacy, but where the responsibility lies to educate teachers on media literacy is still confused. Prois advocates that app creators "have a developing responsibility to show educators how to maximize technology's educational value." Once teachers are taught how to utilize these programs for the best potential, they can confidently endorse them to students, administrators, and parents.
Educators more and more must be able to accomplish that goal of learning for mastery and then endorsement because parents are more and more hesitant to accept the use of technology within a classroom. Teachers have quickly come to realize they must navigate the waters and find content rich applications that apply to the classroom setting.. Prois says when talking about incorporating the SMART board into her classroom, "Beneath that big screen of blinking lights, there was curriculum aligned to standards. The same must hold true for education apps."
Prois discusses the newer apps of Project Noah and Toontastic under the umbrella of great educational apps and opportunities to open the world up to students through technology, however, she states that neither have direct teachers' guides or accompanying lesson plans. While most teachers can create lesson plans around the apps without guides or planning prompts, providing teachers with the media literacy still seems fitting for app developers.
Overall, I believe Prois has a very strong point. The use of mLearning is fantastic for our classrooms and students, but if we as teachers are not educated enough on the best use of these educational apps then our students will suffer and so will our instructional time on task. Too often in my experience students could have learned incredible skills had the teacher had better mastery of them him or herself. Therefore, I possess the same sentiments as Jessica Prois when she says, "As such, if app developers provided some media literacy for teachers on all of these new apps, it would make technology integration in the classroom just that much easier." If we as educators can learn how to master software applications, we could truly change the face of education and engage students in a new, better way.
Exactly!
ReplyDeleteWell done. :-)