As we all know, last spring educators, students, and families were unexpectedly
thrust into a situation where all learning had to take place online. I've
long held the position that we should be seamlessly integrating technology into
our curriculums to help build relevant 21st century skills with our students,
but even for me, this was extreme. With only a week or two notice, there was
simply no way that educators around the world were going to be able to
successfully start using all of these new technology platforms to teach
students and that's not to say that we didn't try. I've seen so many educators
dedicate themselves to learning new skills and figuring out ways to continue
to reach students using technology tools. Last spring it was understandable that
using technology to teach students was pretty uneven and only moderately
successful and in lots of places, completely unsuccessful. But now as we
face the almost certain reality that the majority of our students are going to be
learning online, yet again, I fear that schools have not done enough to prepare
teachers to leverage technology to continue to provide students with a
high-quality education. Starting the year off online and potentially looking at an
entire school year of doing distance learning is a significantly different
situation than suddenly having to switch to online learning toward the end of the
year and the consequences of getting this wrong are real. Students face
learning loss and significant disengagement from school that could
continue to impact them well into their futures. This time we have to get it
right, which means we need to come up with a strategic plan for how we are
going to be using technology to teach our students. To me this strategic plan
means that we are essentially looking at our curriculums and figuring out how we
can digitize it and we also shouldn't just be using technology to replicate
our current instructional practices. We should take advantage of the fact that
we have such powerful tools at our disposal to learn new ways to reach our
students and build upon our practices, so that we can take those practices back to
our classrooms to create more innovative spaces. As teachers
there's a lot in this situation that's out of control. We know that a massive
barrier to students being able to access learning at all during this time is just
basic access to a device and the internet, but notwithstanding those
challenges, there is still a lot that's within our control. We can learn how to
leverage technology to make our lessons more interactive and engaging and we can
learn how to use it to foster creativity in our students, to teach them 21st
century skills, and to personalize learning for them so that they're
receiving instruction that's at their just right level. And we can also learn
new tech infused instructional techniques that might even better help
us reach our students. In the end, if teachers learn how to use technology
tools in order to meet educational goals, as well as teach students how to build
skills using technology, that will be a good thing for public education. So this
time, let's go in with a plan and make sure we are leveraging technology to
provide our students with the high quality education they deserve. If this
is your first time visiting my channel, my name is Sam Kary and I'm the founder
of The New EdTech Classroom, a website and YouTube channel dedicated to helping
teachers learn how to integrate technology into their curriculums. I've
been a classroom teacher and instructional coach for the last decade
and I'm still in the classroom today. I decided to start The New EdTech
Classroom because I always felt frustrated by the fact that it seemed
like teachers always had to go out of their way to learn new instructional
practices. Most teacher PD just didn't really do it for me and I always had
this feeling that if somebody could just show me how to do it, I could definitely
be a much better teacher. It literally took me years of observing other
teachers, reading books, attending conferences, and trial and error in my
own classroom to figure all this stuff out. With a few exceptions, when it came
to education technology in particular, the majority of the content out there
was really just about how to use a program, but not about how to use that
program with students. I still found myself spending hours figuring out how
to bridge the gap between a new program I had been introduced to and how I would
actually use it in my classroom. Sure, having students respond
to each other via video or make podcast projects seem like cool ideas, but how
does it actually fit into my curriculum? How do those programs help me achieve
educational goals? And how do I actually deal with a roomful of students all
sitting in front of a computer recording themselves? I wanted to address those
practical concerns, while also showing teachers how technology could open up
new and exciting possibilities in education. The truth is that before
school closures, my channel was something that very few people paid attention to.
Then around mid-March, I put out a few videos about how to strategically
approach remote teaching and that pretty much changed everything. Today we're a
rapidly growing audience of over 50,000 educators around the world and I've led
webinars in the U.S. and abroad for hundreds of teachers to show them different
techniques for how to use technology in strategic ways. I'm well aware that the
success of this channel has absolutely nothing to do with me and it has
everything to do with the fact that teachers needed to find resources in
order to adapt to this emergency distance learning situation that they
all found themselves in. I am truly humble and appreciative that so many
teachers around the world have found the content that I've been putting up
helpful as we face this unprecedented situation. Now, I know so many educators
are again feeling a sense of anxiety and concern about all the uncertainty that
we're facing in this upcoming school year. I'm not here to tell you about a
magical app or a quick fix that's suddenly going to make your teaching
with technology more effective, but I am here to tell you that with the right
strategic plan in place, you can continue to provide students with a high quality
education using technology and even improve upon your instructional
practices. These are all practices that you will be able to transfer back to a
brick-and-mortar school. In all challenges, there are also opportunities
to become stronger and I urge everyone to use this challenge as an opportunity
to also improve upon our instructional practices. I know that's what I'll be
doing. I'm going to continue providing free resources through my YouTube
channel and my blog to support teachers with strategically
integrating technology and I'm also excited to formally announce that
shortly I'll be launching my first online course, The 21st century Classroom.
The course is designed to be a comprehensive look at how to
strategically integrate technology in order to achieve meaningful outcomes
with students. Not only will you learn how to create a classroom that could be
implemented in person or online, you'll also learn how to leverage technology to
personalize instruction, foster creativity, and provide students with
authentic learning experiences. Since this is my first online course and I
want to make sure that I do it right, I am only going to be accepting a limited
number of students for this cohort. If all of this sounds like something you
might be interested in, you can click on the link below to get your name on the
early-bird waitlist. Stay tuned for the next video because I'm going to be
showing some specific strategies you can use in order to strategically integrate
technology. That being said, I hope you're compelled to meet this historic moment
in education with an innovative mindset. If you have any questions, please feel
free to ask in the comments below or send me an email at
newedtechclassroom@gmail.com. I can't wait to share what I have for you in the next
video and in the meantime, I hope you have a great week!