This was such a fun way to end off the semester! During the month of March my classmates and I were able to get together and do some further research regarding ed tech – specifically in the context of online classes for primary aged students . Our research was broad and overlapped with many ideas but after some thought and discussions with the group as a whole we decided on honing in on 3 major questions relating to online accessibility for elementary years and brainstormed some ideas of what it would look like when put into reality.
Our presentation which is linked HERE discusses our tech question, the relationship our topic has with technology, and some pros and cons that go along with it. Our thought process to this vlog style summary is all word vomited out on this google doc where we spent a solid 5 weeks sharing ideas and going back and forth with final decision making.
When looking back to contributions there was a ton of teamwork involved and some back and forth when solidifying our tech question which is “How can online learning systems like Zoom be used to enhance student learning and participation in school?” When our tech pod met initially I came up with the topic of making online school something that is accessible to students (in elementary and secondary schools). As a team we decided to focus more on younger years because it is something that (we think) isn’t talked about enough. I leaned toward this topic because COVID had such a huge impact on young students and completely destroyed some forms of socialization and access to learning when everything shut down and went to online. Teachers were thrown in the deep-end to figure out how to settle 25+ kids over a platform they had no idea how to use and I just thought that with our cohort going into the world of teaching it is pretty crucial to look deeper into these platforms for education (if we like it or not) because as sad as this sounds I don’t think that that was the last pandemic in our lifespan and HOPEFULLY we can be a little more prepared to keep our young brains interested and engaged with school material and community.