Part 1: Course Reflection

What I have learned

I have learned a tremendous amount about integrating technology into my ceramics courses and about the vast amounts of technology resources available in other disciplines.  The course website and blog has helped me to capture my learning as well as gather strategies I can use for my future teaching.  This course has also prepared me for mentoring other teachers with technology integration.  I researched and applied a variety of technology integration approaches to lessons and activities this semester which has helped prepare me to consider a shift in my career path.

I would like to have the opportunity to collaborate with teachers and other industry professionals to share my technology integration knowledge and hopefully I can be helpful to those who are ready to integrate technology into their practice.

As an art teacher, a huge take away for me was how I can integrate appropriate technologies into my ceramics courses and any art course, to create engaging lessons that are balanced with clay and art creations and technology.

Professional Development Growth

This course has been a valuable professional development experience for me as an Art and CTE instructor. I have begun incorporating webpage creating into my high school curriculum and I can provide quality instruction on creating a website to support students as they learn how to use webpages to showcase their skills and learning. My knowledge of applying effective technology integration methods to a ceramics course has grown, and I understand how to balance clay learning and technology with the needs of students. I have also grown professionally through the creation of three content area lessons from the course. You can visit the lessons with the links below.

This course also helped me to realize the importance of having learners set and visualize goals. This has transformed the way I begin a semester and how I get to know my learners through their interests and goals for learning.

AECT Mastery Skills

Throughout the course, a variety of assignments touched on the AECT skills that are essential for Integration Technologists. Here is a breakdown of AECT standards and examples of how my course work demonstrated the mastery of these skills.

Link to AECT Indicators Chart

Teaching Practice Impacts

The lasting impact of this course will follow me through the rest of my career in education.  I entered the M.E.T. program because after 18 years in the classroom, I felt my technology integration skills were not keeping up with what I saw happening in the real-world and in industry.  My district does not provide adequate professional development in technology integration strategies and I felt like I was not providing my students with the technology skills they need to be successful outside of school.

This course has guided my teaching practice by providing opportunities to research technology integrations that work in the classroom and to apply these into lessons that can be used and adapted in my classroom or other classrooms.  Lastly, this course has helped prepare me for the possibility of a change in my career to something other than just teaching. My website with lessons, activities, and resources demonstrates my accomplishments in this course and it highlights my potential for supporting others with technology integration methods whether is it in the education field, in industry, or non-profits. Learning how to set up a successful blog and website has probably been the hugest professional development experience for me this semester. Having coded a website in a previous course helped me to comprehend the challenge of website design at the development level but this course allowed me to focus on quality content and let Weebly and WordPress guide the coding aspect of the platform, which was a huge advantage for creating quality of the projects rather than designing the structure of the actual website itself.

Theory

Social Constructivism guided most of my learning in this course, as I focused many of my lessons on Project-based learning with student activities and lessons involving primarily group work and collaborative techniques.  Social constructivism supports student learning through discourse and collaboration, and I made all attempts to incorporate this into each activity whether it was research, project creation, discussion, literature circles, critiques, or feedback sessions.  Integrating technology into these activities was straightforward in some cases but challenging for others.  Ceramics is a very independent activity for most artist and it is an expression of self and skill.  To transform a ceramics course into a technology integration experience has been an enormous challenge.  Social constructivism and ceramics could be considered opposites, but I pushed myself to incorporate as much technology integration as possible into the elements of a ceramics course that were a good fit. 

Part 2: Blog Assessment

The chart below is my assessment of my blog performance for this course.  There were a few areas I could have improved. I would have liked to posted my blog earlier in the week and had more time for posting comments on more than just two blogs, but I did add thorough comments each time and it was valuable to choose two and read them thoroughly. I struggled with the VoiceThread blog due to technical difficulties and ended up recording it four times to get it right.  That software is something I need more practice with. I ended up using my i-pad to do it instead of my normal computer for the Voice Thread.

Link to my rubric for the blog assessment.

Not many people read and commented on my blog in the course, probably because my posts were long and my content area of ceramics is something most teachers are not often interested in. Also, I often posted mine on Monday evenings and although they were on time it was towards the end of the due date time. I spent an enormous amount of time of this course, because I could see the potential for me and my students in the learning opportunities. It was hard to manage my full time teaching load, family and two graduate courses this semester.

I have a busy teaching schedule of 5 different subjects a day, I commute quite a distance to work, I have a family to take care of and their dad lives and works on mountains around the world, so I am busy. This time around, his guiding job is longer and further away, so it has added a lot to my plate, but it is what it is…

Back to the course… I am already using my lessons I created and I am hopeful that the website in my final portfolio might be a starting point to help me transition into a new career.

For this post, I am exploring accessibility features on my computer.  I use my personal computer for this work and the features are quite different than the computer I use for my job as a teacher.

1) Operating System & Accessibility Features Available

I work on a Dell Inspiron 7537 laptop with a CORE i7 and I am running Windows 10. I also work on my iPad Air 2 with 12.2 software.  I use them both for coursework and graphics, but most of my personal and coursework is done on my laptop. I use a different laptop for teaching and planning instruction at my school and that runs on Windows 10 also. Accessibility features on the Windows 10 system are abundant an you can see from the screenshot below. I use more than half of these and often adapt my computer for my needs.

2) Accessibility Features On My Computer

There are a plethora of accessibility settings available on my computer. This screenshot shows the settings menu for the general set up of some of the settings I can alter.

 

 

As I explore these settings I realize I use many of them on a regular basis.  The night light setting shown to the right is one I use because bright LED lights trigger migraines for me, so having this feature on when I am working at night (& knowing how to adjust this for any time of the day) is a valuable accessibility feature. 

As I explore these settings I realize I use many of them on a regular basis.  The night light setting shown to the right is one I use because bright LED lights trigger migraines for me, so having this feature on when I am working at night (& knowing how to adjust this for any time of the day) is a valuable accessibility feature. 

Another accessibility setting I use frequently is the Magnifier to zoom in on specific parts of a website or document to see areas better. I have to change the display size sometimes if I am using Premiere CS6 because the menus are too small to see, and I use the narration sometimes when I have vision issues to to migraines.

3) Types Of Disabilities That Might Be Accommodated With Each Accessibility Feature

Users with low vision would benefit from the vision display settings. This adjust text size overall in all applications. The high-contrast setting can also help low vision users adapt to seeing text by darkening the screen and lightening the text.

The audio and closed captioning features would benefit learners who need to hear written words and content rather than reading it. Young readers or learners with ADD might benefit from watching the text being highlighted as it is being read by a computer voice.

My system has talk to text. This can be beneficial for learners who have disabilities that involve using a traditional keyboard or low mobility with arms and hands. This screenshot form my computer settings shows the speech option. The only thing that is a pain is that is only does English. I would like to have one for my son, who is in Spanish Immersion. If you are reading this and you have a solution, comment below!

4) How Someone With One Or More Of The Above Mentioned Disabilities Would Benefit From Using These Accessibility Features

If a learner had more than one disability, so many of these features in my operating system would be even more beneficial. The text to speech would be supportive for low vision and ADD students, in addition to gifted and at-risk students. Having more than one sensory input for content and providing the student with multiple modes of delivery can enhance learning and provide opportunities for growth. The Universal Design for Learning Model has guidelines for options for providing multiple means of representation, expression and engagement. When students need support in one or more of these areas, technology can be of great support if utilized appropriately and efficiently. Accessibility features built into an operating system can often be the key to a student’s success in a classroom. Teachers must be trained on teh supports available in operating systems and be able to support a learner in a variety of situations to help support their needs.

This site has a handy UDL wheel that is a DIY tool any educator can use. I would love an interactive digital one (maybe I will design one) but this simple paper copy works well with a brass fastener. Click the link below to view and download the pdf.

ULD DIY Spinning Wheel Resource

I keep one in every classroom next to my desk. It is a handy reminder that all students are unique and they all need supports, but when accessibility is the issue, this DIY tool comes in handy to help me figure out what digital tool might fit best and if the situation really needs technology accessibility.

Resources

Meyer, A., Rose, D., Gordon, D. (2014). Universal design for learning: Theory and practice. Wakefield, MA: CAST.

Roblyer, M.D., Hughes, J.E. (2019). Integrating educational technology into teaching:
Transforming learning across disciplines, (8th Ed.). New York NY: Pearson.

There are obstacles to integrating technology into ceramics and some of these obstacles are common across many disciplines.  With my chosen content of ceramics, I have found that integrating ceramics with both other disciplines & technology has been the most difficult struggle. Crafting technology integrated activities and lessons that are worthwhile to learners when the main content focus is clay as a material for projects has also been difficult because the focus is ceramics, not technology in my mind and from my experiences with art and ceramics.  If I were to have chosen Art instead of specifically ceramics, the opportunities for more variety of integrated technology opportunities would have been more vast. There are more technology tools and apps for Art in general than specifically, ceramics. Another obstacle in integrating ceramics and technology is that there are few technologies specifically designed for ceramics integration so I have had to be very creative in how I set up my projects.

Another obstacle I have encountered has been my lack of knowledge and application of the standards in the other content areas and how they relate to technology integration.  In the past 3 weeks, I created 3 lessons that integrate ceramics with History, English Language Arts, and Environmental Science. Each lesson was an attempt to create a project-based lesson (PBL) that was interdisciplinary and included technology integration. I work in a PBL school but have minimal time to collaborate with other instructors, so creating the past 3 lessons was a struggle on my own.  It would have been better to have done these lessons with another teacher in the content area that was being integrated with ceramics.  I researched the standards first for the content areas then spent a lot of time looking at how art and ceramics could enhance the content area.  What I realized was I was putting the other content first and art last. This brings me to the next obstacle.

Ok, that image is a bit dramatic, but it the way I feel most of the time in my job. People don’t really care about art and it takes a back seat. However, I find that most of my student do care about what we do in class and what they learn and they put time and effort into their art. For them (and me) art should not be the back seat in instruction or the additional piece to the lesson, but that has been an obstacle for me for my entire teaching career because arts integration is not valued in the schools I have worked in. However, with the addition of technology integration in my courses in the past few years, some people have begun to take notice that art and technology can live in the same house…

So, my school has internships and many students were trying to get internships in graphic design firms or web design companies but they were getting turned away; they had no skills and experience and most had no clue about how to set up a website for their art or other courses.  So we made websites! And they are AMAZING! Arts and technology integration with real-world skills at work! I am impressed with their visual expression and their application of technology tools 

I recently read an article about arts integration and cognitive development in which the author discussed the importance of context and culture in arts integration and how thematic units were showing evidence of student learning when arts integration is thoughtfully embedded in activities (Baker, 2013).  Arts integration is ripe for transformation with technology tools and there are some viable solutions to make that happen. Here are a few I can think of right now:

1) Create ceramics or art lesson that are technology integrated with ceramics or art as the main component and the other disciplines as secondary, yet vital to the learning.

2) Integrate technology with social constructivist methods, using technology as a core component of a community of inquiry (Garrison & Akyol, 2012).

3) Promote reflective practice throughout ceramics and art projects with technology tools and Web 2.0 tools to enhance and scaffold discourse between students and to promote knowledge, skills, and attitudes into learning experiences.

4) Create authentic learning experiences for students that involve real-world applications of technology. Like my students designing websites to showcase their art and schoolwork.

Why keep technology tools in the hands of adults when the future is in young people’s hands?

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Resources

Baker, D. (2013). Art integration and cognitive development. Journal for learning through arts, 9 (1) Retrieved through https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9wv1m987

Garrison, D. R., & Akyol, Z. (2012). The community of inquiry theoretical framework. In  Moore, M. G. (2013). The community of inquiry theoretical framework. In Handbook of Distance Education (pp. 104 – 117). New York, NY: Routledge.

In a recent peer review article I read entitled “Art Integration and Cognitive Development” (Baker, 2013), the author researched the role of arts integration in an elementary school curriculum in a school devoted to arts integration.  She also wanted to see if arts integration related to cognitive development in children and she wanted to see if her study could contribute to informing instructional practice as it relates to arts integration. The school in her study focused on arts integration through thematic units.

Her conclusion was that “even instruction based in a standard course of study, can be guided by thematic objectives interwoven with the arts to yield rich and complex forms of learning for children that promote conceptual and intellectual development through their inter-relatedness to overall instructional concepts and objectives.”  p. 13-14. (Baker, 2013).

I strongly believe that arts integration can be beneficial to student learning, as it can connect disciplines and concepts in learner’s experiences.  Often connections are not distinctly made in a classroom due to the manner in which subjects are taught separately in most American Schools. Interdisciplinary thinking across subjects was mentioned in her article and the idea that dividing learning into fragments across a students day hinders connections in learning. (Baker, 2013).

That brings me to Technology Integration….

I have to be honest here… sometimes the technology I use in classrooms distracts from the hands-on work on constructing and glazing ceramics. I call that…

I have found that appropriate use of technology can speed along projects but it can stall them out too.  A good example was a recent research project I had my students do on Google Sheets.  It looked great but they could not add images without coding the images each time they dropped them in.  Frustrating. And my school district has STARTED BLOCKING STUDENT ACCESS TO MY GOOGLE DOCS, FORM, SHEETS…. This is enjoyable to no degree.

But when I use technology for researching and demonstrating methods I find the biggest successes with technology in relation to student learning. I think this interweaves with arts integration and technology and arts integration can be more engaging and enrich the classroom environment when used effectively.

And authenticity  – that is really hard to get perfect in a classroom.

I read this article and it was a good reminder of what an authentic learning environment should be.  The use of technology in the classroom contributes to authenticity in many ways, as our world is so saturated with technology.

 

 

 

The best quote from the article was, “From the standpoint of the child, the great waste
in school comes from his inability to utilize the experience he gets outside while on the other hand he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning in school. That is the isolation of the school–its isolation from life.”  (Dewey, 1915).

Resources

Baker, D., (2013). Art Integration and Cognitive Development. Journal for Learning Through the Arts: A research journal on arts integration in schools and communities. Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1018320.pdf 

e-Teaching: Management Strategies for the Classroom, (April, 2016). Authentic learning: what, why and how? Retrieved from:
http://www.acel.org.au/acel/ACEL_docs/Publications/e-Teaching/2016/e-Teaching_2016_10.pdf

 

 

 

Games…the excitement, the rewards in the brain for leveling up and getting prizes, the colors, sounds, the escape from the real world…It’s all there in a digital game for many people.  In my classrooms I see kids sneak onto online games to avoid doing their work and then when they are behind in their work and have a D or F their parents wonder why the teacher is so bad at teaching their precious child.

Here are some questions I have been asked about game-based learning in my many years as a ceramics teacher:

• Why don’t you have students do all their drawing and planning in games?
• Why don’t you make it all digital so they are more engaged digitally?
• Why don’t you invite Google experts in the classroom to talk about all the amazing tech stuff out there that kids can use to learn with?
• You could buy some gaming devices for your classrooms like VR or AI stuff.
• Make it this, add that, include excitement…
• Why don’t you use that cool pottery app where they digitally create ceramics work on an app.

So I have answers and they usually sound like excuses. Basically, this graphic sums up how I use gaming in the ceramics room:

And yes, that would be a large void.

Why?

BECAUSE IT IS CERAMICS.  WE WORK WITH CLAY.  THE EARTH – THE REASON YOU ARE HERE ON THIS PLANET.  IT IS ONE OF THE OLDEST ART FORMS THAT IS STILL ALIVE. KIDS LOVE IT AND THEY ARE ENGAGED WITHOUT A DIGITAL DEVICE OR GAMES. DIGITAL GAMES GET IN THE WAY OF THEM WORKING WITH CLAY IN THEIR HANDS.

(And when your child’s expansive i-phone falls in a bucket of wheel throwing water you will ask me to stop allowing students to have digital devices in the ceramics room.)

Of course, I have another visual for you… Here is a better explanation:

Use of digital tools and gaming in the ceramics room

Ok- I do use apps for drawing and designing in the classroom and it does not have to be a game that provides a digital reward for students to gain confidence in their work and practice with skills. Students create websites to house their artwork to show others and share their learning. Google doesn’t have time for our students. Period. My budget is five dollars per kid. Tech gear is expensive and schools and students who are marginalized by society don’t get free gear.

Does game-based learning fit in a ceramics room?

Yes, game-based learning can fit into the design aspect of ceramics learning. In my website for the EdTech 541 course, I am currently working on integrating games-based learning into a lesson for designs with decals or glazes for my students.   You can check it out here and it should be completed in a day or two.  Any suggestions from my few readers are greatly appreciated in the comments section below. For ideas about game-based learning I watched some very interesting videos about creativity and while watching these I got the idea that I could use games with students to develop ideas for designs. Since I teach PBL mostly, I have structured the lesson as a PBL lesson with groups working together in groups of 4 to explore 4 different games. Each group will decide how they want to explore the four games and share their finding with each other and the larger class.  Then students will help each other to develop designs for the ceramics project they are currently working on. This part leaves the flexibility open so the lesson can fit any ceramics project.  It could be a group project or an individual one.

I do see a use for and an advantage for using game-based learning in the classroom, but in the ceramics room it is so specialized and the content is based on making things with clay.  The design approach in ceramics, however, does lend itself to game-based learning in some ways.  Most drawing and design games are not very well developed yet and in the future, I see this opportunity as huge for developers. Google Experiments already has a global following and developers and innovators are on the cusp of great things.

The entry event for this lesson is a video about Google Tilt.  It is very engaging and shows the future of digital gaming and drawing and soon to be collaborative creating in gaming environments.   Google Tilt

The games used in the lesson are:

Game 1: Recursive Drawing Game   
Game 2: Art Palette   
Game 3: Aminahs World
Game 4: Autodraw
Game 5: Pottery HD Lite

Resources:

Behar, Y. (2008). Designing objects that tell stories. Retrieved from:
https://youtu.be/MRao9R7LRB4

Brown, T. (2008). Tales of creativity and play. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play

Farber, M. (2016). 3 Ways to Use Game-Based Learning. Edutopia. Retrieved from: https://www.edutopia.org/article/3-ways-use-game-based-learning-matthew-farber.

This blog post is a VoiceThread.

Click the image above to be directed to my VoiceThread.

Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) are basically the rules of using technology in an organization, workplace, school, or membership. It usually consists of documents that outline how people are expected to use a network to communicate with each other and how the system (hardware and software) are used in combination to aid in communications or technology functions.

Often an AUP includes consequences if they are not followed by users. In schools, having a AUP that is revised and reviewed with a structured approach supports all learners, teachers, and staff as technology changes and use changes. I found an article in Education World that outlines a clear and sensible approach to create and gain support for a school AUP. (Murphy, 2011) Murphy mentions that a successful AUP starts with creating a culture of responsibility. Murphy has steps to a successful AUP that include:

1. Start with a vision
2. Have a committee
3. Take a step back and look at things from the outside
4. Get buy-in from all stakeholders
5. Teach responsibility

I think these steps are basic, but a clear path to beginning to create an AUP for any organization that has a strong desire for their tech users to be part of a culture of understanding that involves technology and communication.

I looked around at some AUP examples and here is a list of a few quality ones I found:

AUP for Bellevue Schools in Bellevue, WA:

Harvard University AUP

Seattle Schools AUP

Hanover County Public Schools

McPherson School District

In conclusion, I found a lot of variants in the language of AUPs. I found it interesting that Seattle Schools AUP states that the internet is a privilege – right in the title. All the policies were clear that the acceptable use is the responsibility of those using the technology and included school appropriate language, common sense, reporting unacceptable use, violations of policy and restrictions on users that violate the policies. Almost all the policies defined what acceptable and not acceptable behaviors and choices lead to violations.

Murphy, K., (2011). Acceptable-use policies in the 21st century, Education World. (n.d.). Retrieved from  https://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/bringing-acceptable-use-policies-into-21st-century.shtml

 

Please click this link to go to my video blog on my Weebly Site.

Here is the video blog YouTube Link.

Change, Technology, & Adventure

When I ponder the changes in our world that involve technology I often remember traveling by train before the internet existed. I would scan through the paper timetables and imagine the train stops along the way from Paris to Madrid or Munich to Budapest. I read the tables like a novel, imagining and fantasizing about places, people, food, markets, and long walks through crooked alleyways with shop windows and curiosities. The paper timetable was like a map to exotic places and adventure. When I created the intaglio print above called “Trainstation” back around 1994, the internet was starting to blossom but I never imagined that technology would drastically alter the simplest pleasure of the train timetable for me or basically alter my daily life and the way I work. A few years ago I stumbled upon a lovely book “How Proust Can Change Your Life” by Philosopher Alain de Botton. On page 44 I discovered that Proust too had similar ideas about train timetables. (de Botton) The connection stirred my curiosity and as I read more of the book and some of his work. I began to learn about his theories of art and the role of the artist in society. It got me thinking about change, technology and what the future might hold.

Coding, Information, & Technology of My Youth

When I was a child, We had stacks of these computer punch cards around the house that my dad brought home from work. Basically, these held codes to run computers in the General Motors plant where he was a computer programmer and systems analyst. To me, they were perfect for making flip book comics on. My father used to explain the advantages of computers and technology to me and my siblings. He bought us a home computer in 1980 and he programmed it with Word Perfect and we had large floppy disks with games and programs. He visited our schools to talk about binary code and its applications. He brought in hardware and discussed the future of computers. I don’t think my peers or teachers had a true grasp of the changes that were to come with education and technology. I could feel it though when my dad talked about his work. (Read more about the application of punch cards here.)

During my undergraduate days, I typed 20-page papers on a “new style” typewriter like the one pictured here. It could hold 10 pages in its memory. I could scroll through the text to proof one line at a time on a small screen. I would type the first 10 pages, proof them, print them, proof them, make changes, then delete it all so I could type the rest. It was a challenge and one that today’s youth do not understand because the technology available for academics and daily life has changed so dramatically and for the better!

The Basic Suite in Education

When I think of the traditional “Basic Suite” for learning I usually think of Microsoft Office that includes Word, Powerpoint, & Excel. These tools have been around for the entire time I have been teaching but they were in their infancy when I was a pre-service teacher. They were clunky and I needed a keyboard cheat sheet for shortcuts. The transition from clunky to functional happened quickly and today these tools are highly effective in my teaching practice. Students use them daily and as a school, we rely on the basic suite to run our educational programs effectively.

What Tech Suite Tools Do I Use As An Art Instructor?

Office 365 is the suite our school uses the most. My instructional content and collaboration is done mainly through OneNote and sometimes through Teams. Onenote is embedded within Teams as a new feature so IT can construct class rosters and manage OneNote access as an option through Teams. Teams provides instant collaboration managed by the teacher and it can be used as a communication tool with direct feedback. It is highly effective with quick directions and documents access that can be added easily. A teacher could essentially run their entire course through Teams, however, OneNote provides a more organized file tab system of content delivery for my classrooms. Word is used for handouts and documents for students to use for group and individual work. I often provide Word documents within OneNote that can be downloaded for student use. Planning sheets and rubrics are all Word documents. Outlook email is the district email and every student has an account. It is highly effective for individual and group communication purposes. I actually don’t use Powerpoint very much anymore, but it has effective uses for presentations and the students use it.

In my courses, we also use Adobe Creative Suite as a platform for photography, illustration, web delivery, and graphic design. This suite, combined with Office 365 provides a perfect combination of artistic creative platforms and file management basics to run effective art courses.

The relative advantage of using Office 365 and Adobe Creative Suite in my art courses involves providing students with access to a variety of technology tools, the organization of my course content for delivery in a variety of ways, options for students to provide evidence of learning, and effective tools for collaboration. The advantage of having both suites involves students achieving higher levels of quality of artworks and delivery of those works to others.

As an instructor, I feel privileged to have these tools available to me but there are times when the Google application suites far exceed Office 365 in their collaborative nature and sharing opportunities, so I use Google tools with my high school students. They favor Google over Office 365 products and their work is often higher quality due to the nature of the collaborative features provided by Google Doc, Google Slides, and Google Sites. Adobe Spark has also played a positive role in this effort to produce high quality works in my classroom. Because Adobe Spark can be used over all devices my students can record narration on a digital device and add images from their laptop and save to an online server. They love it! And I see their pride in their work. That pride is an essential part of what education should be about, right?

References

De Botton, A. (1998). How Proust Can Change Your Life. New York: Vintage
Books.

This blog post refers to the following report: NMC Horizon Report K-12 2017

When I read through the technology trends reported in the NMC Horizon Report for 2017, most of the topics presented were very familiar to me as I have taught in the Washington State public school system for about 18 years and participated in many technology integration conversations over the years. Back in 2003, I joined my school’s technology team and five years later our team was replaced by one certified teacher in each school to serve as a technology leader/coach. This position still exists today in every school in my school district.

I analyzed the Horizon Report and created a brief outline in the next section so I could understand the overall purpose and intent and how it drives and influences my instruction. I also have some thoughts on how the article helped me consider how I can use relative advantage as a tool to assist me in promoting the use of technologies in my school.

Timelines for Technology Adoption

The report outlined three timelines to technology adoption in K-12 education and it presented important developments. The key trends in the report have influenced my instruction as an Art and CTE instructor and are still influencing my instruction today. Many of the developments in the report have already been implemented by me and/or my school.

1. Long term – driving edtech adoption in K-12 for 5 or more years
   1. Advancing cultures of innovation
   2. Deeper learning approaches
   3. EXAMPLE DEVELOPMENTS in 4-5 years: Artificial Intelligence & Internet of Things
2. Mid term – driving edtech adoption in K-12 for the next 3-5 years
   1. Measuring learning
   2. Redesigning learning spaces
   3. EXAMPLE DEVELOPMENTS in 2-3 years: Analytics technologies & Virtual Reality
3. Short term – driving edtech adoption in K-12 for the next 1-2 years
   1. Coding as literacy
   2. STEAM learning
   3. EXAMPLE DEVELOPMENTS in 1-2 years: Makerspaces & Robotics

Challenges that Impede K-12 Technology Adoption

There were three levels of challenges presented and these are elements I can relate to as an educator. I also work in a school with a staff that attempts to tackle these challenges with more than just technology, but with school culture and instructional design. In the chart below I have briefly defined the challenges based on the report and in italics, and I have added my thoughts on how these challenges influence how I present and teach ceramics and art to my learners.

Solvable Challenges: These are understood and there are known solutions.
My thoughts: Authentic learning opportunities are driving most of my instruction as I teach in a Project Based Learning (PBL) and a Big Picture Model school. Authentic learning is at the heart of Big Picture learning and creating evidence of learning is part of student learning goals in every course I teach. Families are invited to see student presentations and I have an art gallery space run by two student interns where student art work is displayed and we have gallery openings every two-three months. The art gallery space is one component of my authenticity focus and we are creating an online art gallery website in the next few months. Students create public websites for my high school Ceramics, Art & Design, Video Production, and Photography courses. We have started a YouTube channel for Video Production courses to highlight student productions and I have a YouTube channel for ceramics techniques and methods. We invite the public to view student work and we use the websites to improve our digital literacy skills and problem solve visual issues. The making of websites is both an authentic solution to learning with technology and hands-on experience in real-world applications of technology in the classroom.
The challenge is not solved for me though: The time it takes to create YouTube content for ceramics is tremendous with my instructional workload. I do not have any colleagues to support me or to collaborate with, as I am the only ceramics instructor and video production instructor in my school. Collaboration with other staff at my school is part of the challenge of creating authentic cross-discipline projects with PBL. We all struggle to find the time to meet and collaborate and I feel there are effective technology tools out there that can help us with this challenge, but with lack of leadership in locating these tools we tend to revert to what we already have instead of going forward with a wish list of what “could be” or what we really need. This collaborative approach to utilizing technology as a staff takes time though and a path has begun. There is also the desire to create more authentic experiences for all our learners while being able to have a work-life balance. That is a tough boundary and it must be set; we all agree on this. I want to see more teachers involved in utilizing manageable technologies as a collaborative tool to support our focus on student authentic learning opportunities and improving student digital literacy.

Difficult: These are understood, but solutions are elusive.
My thoughts: My school already has redefined the role of the teacher as an advisor and most of us are on a first name basis with students. This is not universal, however, due to cultural, religious, and societal influences in our student and staff populations. As far as how that relates to technology in the classroom, the role of the teacher as facilitator or advisor allows for more constructivist learning approaches in the classroom and offers more opportunities for technology integration with student voice and choice. For example, in a ceramics course I recently taught, students had to create a clay object that had a personal connection and a connection to a societal, cultural, or historical context to show a deeper understanding of connecting ceramics to things “outside the bubble of themselves”.
Allowing student choice of formats for presentation allowed student freedom to use technologies to present and share work in numerous ways. It also presented challenges for accessibility of digital tools. Some technologies student wanted to use cost money and with a $5 per student budget we have to use what is free or provided by the school district. This presents an enormous equity issue relating to student desire to use resources they access to outside of school. This presented an uneven playing field so I required students to use free or provided technologies and most presentations for ceramics works had to be completed during school hours and on school computers.

Wicked: These are complex to even define and address.
My thoughts: The challenge of closing the achievement gap in my ceramics and art courses involves providing all materials, technologies, and instruction in class to every learner. It entails providing technologies to every student outside of the classroom. Luckily our school has had one-to-one laptops for seven years and we universally use Microsoft OneNote to house curriculum and instructional content for student access. Although OneNote has flaws and downsides, the pros outnumber the cons for basic content delivery. It is a decent holding place for instructions, interactive calendars, and external links for learning. Using technology to bridge the achievement gap is a complex challenge in any school because instructors must know how to scaffold student learning with the right tools. OneNote allows access to all learners and access is often a barrier. with that barrier removed, we find other complexities that add to closing the achievement gap and most are not technology. If a student doesn’t have internet access at home then they can request a voucher to pay for it from our school district. But socio/economic and Social-emotional issues weight heavily in the achievement gap challenges.
Not all technology fits every learner and the achievement gap will only close when personalized learning takes a stronger hold in education. To use technology to show growth in learning is a challenge also, and I use it in my ceramics and art courses by asking students to drop rough draft images of their work in OneNote. Through the process of a project, we add feedback from peers and family. When the project is complete, another image is added and growth is visually evident in the progress. This is measuring learning and measuring growth. I would love to have well-designed portfolio software I could utilize in my classroom that I don’t have to develop myself or spend endless hours creating myself in OneNote. If anyone out there in the world reads this and you know of a good portfolio software platform for arts that includes assessment strategies and tracks student goals and growth, comment at the end to help me out.

Last Section! Relative Advantage as a tool to assist me in promoting the use of technology in my school.

Relative advantage….I made a chart for my high school ceramics course and it is a work in progress. Here is the link on my website: Relative Advantage Chart for Ceramics.
When directly linked to standards, the relative advantage chart demonstrates the usefulness of technology tools to support learning in my ceramics classes. Through a variety of technology tools, software, and applications, student learning can reach the transformation level in all five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. The Technology Integration Matrix from FCIT
One of the challenges in promoting the use of these tools in my school is the time investment of others to view the work I do with students and be interested in how they could leverage these technologies to make similar impacts on student learning in our school community. This takes more than time and commitment from our amazing team of educators, but it takes strong leadership from many stakeholders who hold the purse strings to sustain innovative teaching practices and have a commitment to providing meaningful collaboration time among staff and technology professionals.