Technology: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Impacted my Technology Pedagogy

Technology has been a priority in pre-service education for quite some time. I'm approaching a decade since my pre-service education, and I know how much emphasis was placed on navigating the changing technological landscape in my own program. I can only image the increased emphasis now. 

One tenet of technology I have tried to stay true to is that technology should never become a paper and pencil replacement. If it can be done with paper, using technology merely becomes a substitute and not an enhancement. 

But as we try to reintegrate ourselves into "conventional" education post-pandemic, we are faced with the issue that technology was primarily a substitute for paper and pencil for the last 18 months. 

 So now what?  How do we find a way forward and backward - a way that progresses the skills we have developed but also reflects on how we can reintegrate the technology focuses pre-pandemic? 

Jennifer Gonzales, of Cult of Pedagogy, suggests six strategies for deeply assessing technology. Her article can be found here.  

I love how she situates the entire reflection process around first using the technology like a student. We weren't able to do so last year - we had to readily adapt to the unexpected change in public safety requirements (as we should have done - student safety is of the upmost importance!).  I knew last year I wanted to use several different apps that I heard had great reviews and seemed to have the potential to enhance my instruction. Ultimately, I didn't. I asked a student about the app and they nearly broke down talking about how difficult it was for them to navigate between the 2-5 different apps teachers were using. They never knew where to look for information, some apps worked better on different devices, and all of their log ins were difficult to remember. It was then that I realized that we failed to prepare students for this new reality and that the overabundance of technology apps did not equal high quality pandemic instruction. 

Additional questions Gonzalez poses that can help in assessing technology is about the outcome of pilot groups, a review of data, and an assessment of need, impact, and outcome.  When I think back to one year ago, or even 18 months ago, these were not all questions we had the opportunity to consider. We had to make a quick adjustment for the safety of our students. 

Now is the time for us to reconsider our technology pedagogy and the application of that pedagogy in our own classroom practice. I hope that you find time during your last few weeks of summer to ask the hard questions, to deeply and authentically assess how you integrate technology into the classroom. We may not be able to completely remove technology as a means of substitution because of the ongoing pandemic or the changing needs of public safety, but we can think more deeply about how we choose to adapt.