4.3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. (PSC 4.3/ISTE 5c)
Artifact: Diversity Blog Post
Reflection:
Throughout the course of ITEC 7430, I was asked to add entries to my portfolio blog about various topics concerning instructional technology. One of the topics I covered in an entry entitled “Diversity and Technology” centered on the issue of fostering an understanding of and respect for diversity and cultural awareness among our students and the larger world. In this blog post, I discussed how technology can be used not only develop this understanding and respect within our students, but also to facilitate those varying needs within our own diverse student populations as well.
This artifact demonstrates my ability to model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs as I go into detail about using technology to meet the varying needs that come from the diversity within our own classrooms not only to differentiate instruction, but to fully personalize learning for each student. I discuss how this can be accomplished with the use of assistive technology such as text-to-speech software, dictation services, fact recall websites, and online math computational tools. Using technology, students can create different artifacts of their learning and teachers can offer a variety of assessment strategies. Technology makes it possible to have "the ability to learn what we want, when we want, with whomever we want as long as we have access" (Richardson, 2012, p. 23). When technology is used to personalize learning this way, it leads to the support of the individual, diverse needs of our students. This artifact demonstrates my ability to model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to enhance cultural understanding as I describe how tools such as Skype can be used to help students learn first-hand from people of different cultures via whole-class or individual “Skype pals” discussions with another individual or class somewhere else in the nation or the world, or by maintaining and/or seeking out others’ blogs to initiate global conversations. The use of digital tools and resources to communicate with others around the world in this way will also increase global awareness in students because they are excited to learn where their commenters and/or Skype pals are from and learn more about them since they are personally invested in their own blog posts and/or Skype conversations. The comments they receive on their blogs may also represent varying opinions or perspectives from their own. The lesson here would be that there can be more than one way of looking at a particular topic, and that this does not have to come down to someone being right or wrong. Another example I include is how Lyn Hilt describes her students' heightened interest in the tornadoes in Alabama or the earthquake in Haiti after making personal connections, either through Skyping or blogging, with people directly involved in those events. This artifact also demonstrates my ability to model the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness as I personally conducted the research and wrote the blog post to showcase best practices in this type of technology use. I could further model the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness by sharing the blog post with other teachers via email or faculty meetings to specifically discuss how to use technology to accomplish these three goals. Finally, this artifact demonstrates my ability to facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness as I did write it to help other teachers learn about these best practices to use in their own teaching.
I learned many things about the intersection of technology and diversity while conducting the research to complete this blog post. Although I had previous experience using assistive technology to support diverse student needs, I had not thought about my role in helping students enhance their cultural understanding and increasing their global awareness through the use of technology. As a result, I have tried to incorporate more learning activities using technology in a way that allows my students to communicate with others and gain perspectives from those beyond the confines of our school building and local community. To improve this blog post, I could have included specific citations about how to accomplish this goal within the setting of an elementary music class. I do not believe that just because I see my students once per week for less than an hour makes me exempt from the responsibility of fostering understanding and respect for diversity in our world. I also would have tried to distribute this message to other teachers, as discussed above, to help them learn about using technology this way as well.
If shared and discussed, this blog post could have an impact on faculty development as it could be used to help teachers understand not only how to use technology this way, but also why it is important to do so. This impact could be assessed by comparing anecdotal data from walkthroughs and observations about the number of times technology is observed as being used this way in the classroom. This blog post could also have an impact on student achievement, as it would likely lead to more personalized learning with these digital tools and resources, thus increasing their individual achievement ability as well as overall worldview. The impact on student learning could be measured by comparing student achievement data before and after the discussion of this blog post.
Richardson, W. (2012). Preparing students to learn without us. Educational Leadership, February 2012, pp. 22-26.
Throughout the course of ITEC 7430, I was asked to add entries to my portfolio blog about various topics concerning instructional technology. One of the topics I covered in an entry entitled “Diversity and Technology” centered on the issue of fostering an understanding of and respect for diversity and cultural awareness among our students and the larger world. In this blog post, I discussed how technology can be used not only develop this understanding and respect within our students, but also to facilitate those varying needs within our own diverse student populations as well.
This artifact demonstrates my ability to model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs as I go into detail about using technology to meet the varying needs that come from the diversity within our own classrooms not only to differentiate instruction, but to fully personalize learning for each student. I discuss how this can be accomplished with the use of assistive technology such as text-to-speech software, dictation services, fact recall websites, and online math computational tools. Using technology, students can create different artifacts of their learning and teachers can offer a variety of assessment strategies. Technology makes it possible to have "the ability to learn what we want, when we want, with whomever we want as long as we have access" (Richardson, 2012, p. 23). When technology is used to personalize learning this way, it leads to the support of the individual, diverse needs of our students. This artifact demonstrates my ability to model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to enhance cultural understanding as I describe how tools such as Skype can be used to help students learn first-hand from people of different cultures via whole-class or individual “Skype pals” discussions with another individual or class somewhere else in the nation or the world, or by maintaining and/or seeking out others’ blogs to initiate global conversations. The use of digital tools and resources to communicate with others around the world in this way will also increase global awareness in students because they are excited to learn where their commenters and/or Skype pals are from and learn more about them since they are personally invested in their own blog posts and/or Skype conversations. The comments they receive on their blogs may also represent varying opinions or perspectives from their own. The lesson here would be that there can be more than one way of looking at a particular topic, and that this does not have to come down to someone being right or wrong. Another example I include is how Lyn Hilt describes her students' heightened interest in the tornadoes in Alabama or the earthquake in Haiti after making personal connections, either through Skyping or blogging, with people directly involved in those events. This artifact also demonstrates my ability to model the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness as I personally conducted the research and wrote the blog post to showcase best practices in this type of technology use. I could further model the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness by sharing the blog post with other teachers via email or faculty meetings to specifically discuss how to use technology to accomplish these three goals. Finally, this artifact demonstrates my ability to facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness as I did write it to help other teachers learn about these best practices to use in their own teaching.
I learned many things about the intersection of technology and diversity while conducting the research to complete this blog post. Although I had previous experience using assistive technology to support diverse student needs, I had not thought about my role in helping students enhance their cultural understanding and increasing their global awareness through the use of technology. As a result, I have tried to incorporate more learning activities using technology in a way that allows my students to communicate with others and gain perspectives from those beyond the confines of our school building and local community. To improve this blog post, I could have included specific citations about how to accomplish this goal within the setting of an elementary music class. I do not believe that just because I see my students once per week for less than an hour makes me exempt from the responsibility of fostering understanding and respect for diversity in our world. I also would have tried to distribute this message to other teachers, as discussed above, to help them learn about using technology this way as well.
If shared and discussed, this blog post could have an impact on faculty development as it could be used to help teachers understand not only how to use technology this way, but also why it is important to do so. This impact could be assessed by comparing anecdotal data from walkthroughs and observations about the number of times technology is observed as being used this way in the classroom. This blog post could also have an impact on student achievement, as it would likely lead to more personalized learning with these digital tools and resources, thus increasing their individual achievement ability as well as overall worldview. The impact on student learning could be measured by comparing student achievement data before and after the discussion of this blog post.
Richardson, W. (2012). Preparing students to learn without us. Educational Leadership, February 2012, pp. 22-26.