Thinking of the word technology, you can brainstorm innumerous ideas instantaneously! That’s all because we live in such a nation where technology has evolved greatly within the last two decades and due to this, we encounter in our daily lives. Knowing this knowledge, people out of this school board or even in developing countries might be predicting that we as students would be experiencing and interacting with such advanced technology every day in our schools. However, it’s not fully correct. Our schools in the board try to incorporate technology, but they either forget to model how to use it effectively or result in insufficient funding. Both these factors play a large role for which why classes where technology is present display unsatisfying results. For this reason, in my course IDC, our teacher discussed with our class of why teachers especially in high schools fail to engage students in courses that are predominantly theory based. Form this topic, our debated the different viewing s of the teachers and students on technology in classroom. After the discussion, we arrived to a conclusion of trying to convince several teachers who do not utilize technology in their classrooms to experiment this idea and identify that technology can indeed increase student engagement and their achievement. Within the third week since the school resumed, the class was split into three, each group representing a scope related to implanting PEDs (Personal Electronic Devices) in a classroom. I volunteered to participate in the group specifically focussing on increasing student engagement and achievement by having PEDs in the classroom. We commenced this group activity by recording and planning the requirements for this experiment. What I really admire about this project is that it was goal-directed. By this I mean that the execution of this experiment is entirely dependent on if it goes as planned, so there’s no rush. This is a major advantage because this allows us to execute our plan more effectively, and provides the opportunity to make modifications along the way to increase the productivity. Also, since this project is group-oriented, there is no such pressure of doing things independently and so, the tasks are distributed evenly. This benefits each member to perform their assigned task in a better way because it’s not cramming everything on one individual. As we were performing this task, I felt that our group was not efficient and productive many times. Many members of our group would get “off-track” for long periods of time, ultimately wasting time and being unproductive. Another major drawback was that many certain individuals in the group would dominate others severely, meaning despite of another person being right or wrong, they would merely disagree to show that only their opinions are accounted. I was always dominated, and if I tried to lead or put my opinion forward, I would either be ignored or disagreed. Some positives were that even if some people dominated others, the remaining would try and patch-up for them and incorporate everyone. In addition, when we worked together, people who were responsible of their parts would ensure that they completed it, meaning all members contributed and ensured that they completed the assigned tasks. So far, in the project, the planning was successfully completed with the input of everyone’s ideas to estimate how long this experiment will be carried out for. Later, my partner and I were responsible of creating the diagnostic student survey for a baseline of what they perceive on having PEDs in the classroom. This is crucial for us to recognize what areas do students lack in and require a change (with the help of PEDs to increase their engagement). There were no complications in working with my partner as there was a mutual understanding. It was not clearly decided of who is certainly responsible of what job after completing the first task because it was dependent on who the teacher may be and the course that we would have to examine on. The biggest concern I have is that, certain group members when required to work on a certain task, they distract themselves by browsing gaming sites or social media or doing their other courses’ homeworks. I become peeved by this because this causes a broken bridge of communication, where I (and I am pretty sure others too) are confuse don what exactly we are doing and where to go from here. They only stay on task when being supervised (and sometimes this too doesn’t stop them from being distracted). I think this is because each member excluding myself is in grade eleven, which explains why they don’t understand the frustration of grade twelves. Hopefully, they understand that regardless of what grade they are in, they should give importance to the class they are in and work hard for it. I predict the outcome of the project would be quite successful primarily because we are confident that students would have an alternative to presentations for their lessons or having chalkboard lessons. They would become more engaged with PEDs and have increased interest in that course, thus improving student achievement as well.
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AuthorA grade 12, who is always mistaken as a niner. Archives
January 2017
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