Skip to main content

The Classroom Ecosystem: Teachers and "Robots" Working Together

This week I had the opportunity to listen to Kirsten Thompson
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash


, the Coordinator of ICT in my home division, Mountain View School Division (MVSD). The title of Kirsten's presentation was:  "Why I Replaced Myself With a Machine."


During the presentation, Kirsten touched on many topics including the use of social media, internet equality (rather, the inequality of the internet in Manitoba) and the mind shift she adopted as a teacher. The topic that she discussed that interested me the most was the discussion on her mind shift. The shift she made was after looking at the question: Will teachers eventually be phased out by “robots”? Instead of facing that question with fear, she asked herself: What's happening in my class that I can use a robot instead? When “robot” is referenced in this context, it can mean anything from actual artificial technology (Siri, Alexa or the Google AI), to any technology in general.


When Kirsten talked about the mindset shift, she

proposed looking at the classroom as an ecosystem to determine what role a robot would fill in her classroom and what role she would fill. Within an ecosystem, there are abiotic elements, which are the nonliving things, in this case, it would be the technology and there are the biotic elements, which are the living things, the teachers. In any ecosystem there are niches and two things cannot occupy the same niche effectively. So she proposed that when we look at our practice of teaching, we as teachers need to separate our practice into two things. Looking at what are the things that make us, as teachers, unique and what are things that can be pushed onto another avenue, the technology, so we could fill our unique niches better. 


In this blog post, I will reflect upon what niches I intend to fill with technology and what niches I will fill as a human through my practice as a teacher. The thoughts and ideas you read below will only be the beginning of my analysis of the classroom as an ecosystem. My thoughts and practice will change and expand as I gain new knowledge and experiences, just as an ecosystem changes over time.


Technology Niche - Formative Assessment
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of what niche technology can fill better than me as the teacher, is the facilitating and marking of formative assessment. Formative assessment is such a crucial element of the ecosystem to be able to assess the students in order to adjust the learning to better support students' needs. Although, if all my time is spent marking quizzes and creating formative assessments then there is less opportunity and time for me to actually assess the feedback received from the formative assessment in order to adjust my teaching. By using technology already established I can free more time to be able to adjust my teaching to improve the learning experience.

Some tools that will fill the formative assessment niche include Kahoot for interactive games for knowledge and understanding checks, Google Forms and Khan Academy for self-grading and immediate feedback quizzes, Google Docs and/or Etherpad to facilitate collaborative discussions. The number of tools that can be used for formative assessment purposes that are already established is many more than the ones I mentioned. By using those tools, I can take the data the tools gather along with the data I gather from observation, to be able to fully assess my students in a formative way. The niches that technology can fill are many but that does not make the human teacher absolute but rather improves the quality of the human teacher.


Human Niche - Relationships
By using supporting technology to fill niches, it frees up so much time for us, the teachers, that can put into building relationships with the students. Connections with students are such a crucial and multifunctional aspect of the classroom ecosystem that can only be filled by the human teacher. Connections with students build trust on both my side as the teacher and the students' side, functions as a classroom management technique and most importantly fulfill the students' physiological needs which then allow the students to be ready to learn.

Relationships are not the only niche I as a teacher fill that technology could not and I will continue to access my ecosystem to identify and explore what tool, technology or me as a teacher best fills each niche. I hope that you take some time to consider what role you play in your own classroom ecosystem.




Other resources:

This blog post: Building an EdTech Ecosystem in Your Classroom, is a really neat additional resource I encourage you to check out if the classroom ecosystem was a topic of interest. The blog post talks about shifting the ecosystem to a student-technology-based center.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Cristina Diaz18 January 2021 at 14:54

    Hey Jenna, great post!
    I have thought a lot about the niches Kristen was talking about. It is super interesting to see how we are slowly incorporating more and more technology in our classes. I think it's mostly a good thing! Using youtube videos and kahoots to teach and assess give us a lot of variety and possibilities for our lessons! But you're right, there are things that technology can never replace like the connection and relationships we develop with our students. Those relationships are so crucial in child development and learning.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mrs. Z19 January 2021 at 12:55

      Thank you for the reply Cristina! I found your use of the words "slowly incorporating" so appropriate. As much as we live in the ever changing 21st century, I find the actual process of the technology being used in the class, or perhaps used effectively is a rather slow process when compared to the rate technology is created and released. Although, I am not sure if I am convinced that slow technology integrations is a positive or a negative yet. Something to think on.

      Delete
  2. Mrs T22 January 2021 at 07:38

    Thank you for your review Jenna; I was so pleased to see a familiar Dauphin face in the crowd! I appreciate that you have taken the time to not only review my analogy but also apply it to your practice with specific examples. I am interested in seeing how this sticks with you moving forward into your next classroom experience.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mrs. Z8 February 2021 at 19:23

      Thank you Kristen for taking your time to both present to the class and check out my blog! I am very excited for the possibility of working with you in the future within MVSD. Your presentation has given me a whole new insight on technology in my classroom that I am excited to implement in the near future.

      Delete
    2. Mrs. Z1 March 2021 at 14:29

      Correction: Name spelling *Kirsten*

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the Internet of Things (IoT) and the power it holds for education?

In  an interview with David Bowie  in 1999, the interviewer counters Bowie regarding the internet saying, "Isn't it just a tool?" and David Bowie's response "No it's not, no, no it's an alien life form [...] it's going to, it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about and [...] it's happening in every form." The internet today surrounds us in previously unimaginable ways and plays a huge role in our lives but have many of us questioned what it really is and the power the internet holds for education in particular?  Until today, I always just used the internet and never really thought about what it was and its endless possibilities. This post will take us through a brief look at what the internet is but more specifically what the "Internet of things" is and what power does it hold for education. 
9 comments
Read more

FREE COFFEE - Bringing Joy and Delight to the Classroom

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash Have you ever had a stranger pay for something for you?  The feeling of pure delight that I get when I drive up to the drive-through window to pay for my coffee and they say "The person before paid for you" is something that I hope everyone gets to experience. The delight doesn't directly come from not having to pay, but rather the action of kindness and the element of surprise. This concept of joy and delight can and should be brought into the classroom. This week's speaker Dean Shareski spoke to bringing joy and delight into the classroom.  To say the least, Dean's presentation was uplighting and got my brain working. He discusses how "learning is [suppose to be] a joyful act worthy of celebration" but often the words that students to describe school and learning are negative. Often the atmosphere of schools can take on rigid, test-driven and boring in the eyes of students. We as teachers have the power to change t...
3 comments
Read more

Boss Level - Achieve Total Engagement - Gamification Reflection

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash Due to the ongoing pandemic, remote learning is a hot topic of discussion and is a common practice within Education. But what if I told you that remote learning the way we see it today, has actually been going on for years? This week I had the opportunity to listen to a presentation by two individuals who have been teaching remotely, long before the pandemic. Those individuals are Chris Fredrickson and Shannon Magee, who are both Web-Based Course Consultants for the Province of Manitoba.   The topics Chris and Shannon covered during their presentation in my Internet for Educators course, included many ways to engage students in a remote setting such as: using an LMS, collaborative tools, portfolios, gamification and personalized learning. I had the opportunity to participate in not one, but two other Personal Development (PD) sessions with Chris and Shannon at the BYTE conference this year. Chris presented in detail the topic of gamification ...
4 comments
Read more