Join us as we jump into the world of digital technologies in the classroom, exploring their impact on education and engagement, and whether they allow students to explore and learn in entirely new ways.
Join us as we jump into the world of digital technologies in the classroom, exploring their impact on education and engagement, and whether they allow students to explore and learn in entirely new ways.
From game-based learning to the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into teaching practices, it is hard to choose the right tools for our students and classrooms from the many exciting options available.
To help us navigate the benefits and challenges of ‘digital classrooms’ are tech-savvy educators - Jo Blannin, Catherine Newington and Kaylia Tierney - who discuss some innovative and inspiring ways they are using new technology in their curriculum.
Together, we explore:
Whether you're already tech-savvy or just starting to incorporate technology into your classroom, this informative and engaging episode of Let’s Talk Teaching is well worth the listen.
Resource recommendations by guests:
Tech Tools Resource Guide: A comprehensive and organised database of the most frequently used technology tools in schools, that is managed by Jo and created by academics around the country as part of the Australian Technology Educators Network (ATTEN). The database is searchable by curriculum area, digital concept and resource type, with direct links to each resource. Link here
‘7 things you should know’ by Educause has articles about tech that are user-friendly and easy-to-read. Catherine’s favourite articles include 7 Things you should know about Teaching and Learning with Video and 7 Things You Should Know About Artificial Intelligence in Teaching and Learning.
Unity - gaming development platform that Catherine preferences for use in classrooms.
Kaylia’s favourite apps
Special Guests:
If you’re enjoying Let’s Talk Teaching, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review! You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, and share your thoughts on the show by using the hashtag #letstalkteachingpodcast
If you’re interested in hearing more about the short courses, undergraduate, and postgraduate study options that Monash Education offers, please visit Monash Education's learn more page.
Access this episode's transcript here: https://lets-talk-teaching.simplecast.com/episodes/navigating-digital-technologies-in-education/transcript
This podcast is recorded on the land of the Boonirong people of the Eastern Kulin Nation.
We'd like to pay our respect to Elders past and present
and acknowledge that this land was stolen and never ceded.
Welcome to Let's Talk Teaching, the podcast created by teachers, for teachers.
I'm Associate Professor Rebecca Cooper, Director of Initial Teacher Education at Monash University's Faculty of Education
and I'll be your host for this series.
Our aim is to create a conversational series that's informative, engaging and relevant
to your teaching practice.
Joined by academics and teaching alumni from Monash University, we'll be exploring the
challenges, issues and experiences you might be facing in and out of the classroom, drawing
on their personal experiences to provide you with valuable insights into the world of teaching.
Today we're diving head first into the world of digital technologies in the classroom and
and more broadly their place in education.
As teachers, we know that technology has quickly become an integral part of the classroom,
offering a wealth of opportunities to enhance learning and engagement.
But with so many exciting options available, it can be challenging to choose the right
digital tools for our students and classroom.
Joining us today is Dr Jo Blannon, Senior Lecturer, Course Leader and Tech Wiz here in
the Faculty of Education.
Catherine Newington, ICT Educators Specialist at the Australian Computer Society, and Kailia
Tierney, secondary school teacher at Hillsville High School.
Catherine and Kailia also work with us here in the Faculty of Education, teaching in the
Master of Education in Digital Learning.
Now let's get into the show.
Welcome everyone, thanks for joining me on this really exciting episode with Catherine,
Kailia and Jo.
And Jo, I'm going to start with you.
always had an engagement with digital technology in the classroom, but what was the first and
probably pretty exciting piece first piece of technology that you got to work with in
the classroom?
I think like many teachers, I was a primary school teacher for many years. I think for
many of us, it was the bank of computers that suddenly appeared in your classroom one morning
and you were told, and now you have computers and we had no idea what to do with them. So
there was a steep learning curve, but the ability to kind of make choices for what students
do with the technology with just your old fashioned 20 year ago desktops was really exciting because
the classroom I was in didn't even have an overhead projector at that time. So we went straight from
nothing and a chalkboard to a bank of computers in the back of the room that the kids just tripped
over a lot of the time. But it was exciting because they were actually able to create,
they were actually able to do independent things with a computer. And I think that was my first
kind of insight that there's something to this computing stuff that kids are going to be interested
in and that has educational potential too. Nice one. Catherine, you're nodding along there. Have
you had a similar experience? Thinking back right when I first started teaching primary school as
well, I had three desktops in the classroom and I remember getting my students these 25 little
preppies all around one tiny little computer screen and going, "Look at this, like this is amazing."
And I think that was the pivotal moment for me to see the potential of technology and to really
start that inquiry based learning. I think I was probably only like term three into my teaching
career. And Kailia, where did you start with the digital technology in the classroom? A bit
different for you? Yes, very different. I started right in the middle of COVID. So absolutely,
everything was technology. So I did my entire masters over COVID. So it was all over digital
technology and then I was thrown in 2021 and it was all on Zoom and Webex and all of the digital
technologies. So that's a start to a teaching career really, Kaleigh. So what have you taken
with you as we've come out of COVID? What stuck do you think in terms of the digital technology
in the classroom? I think actually when we first went back into the classroom there was
really like a sense of we don't really want to touch this for a second. Like there was this sense
of like people were a bit over using technology and they kind of just wanted to go back to
just get me off the screen, get me in the classroom, get me talking to people again
and then slowly bringing it back in because people I feel like just had a little bit of enough
but then it forced us to use different kinds of technologies so moving away from laptops and
more into like game-based technology and things like that so it was a little bit different.
Okay all right that sounds pretty exciting how have you used game-based technology in education?
We started using Minecraft and then we started using,
I use a lot of Blukit in my--
I haven't heard of that, what's that?
It's sort of like Kahoot,
but personally I think it's better.
So it's like, so Kahoot always relies on the person
who knows the most winning.
Whereas Blukit is a little bit more
having that game-based element.
So it kind of does give the other students
who don't always get everything right a bit more of a chance.
And so it really does engage a whole range
of different students because everybody at the end of the day
has the opportunity to win.
So you're saying these sorts of things is really advantageous for education in what
ways?
Well, a lot of the time, like, I mean, I'm a maths teacher and trying to get students
excited about maths can be a little bit of a challenge.
So when you are doing those games, the students are a little bit more excited to play and that
you're kind of like encouraging them to play without realising them that they're learning.
Like I went through actually a whole lesson of we just did different games, like we literally
just did different maths games for a whole double lesson.
And then at the end, one of the more difficult students came up to me and he goes, "Oh, that
was actually all right."
And I was like, "Thanks."
Thanks for that.
I appreciate that.
It's a surprise.
Jo, I'm seeing you cheering from the sidelines here.
What made you so excited about what Kaylee has said?
The main thing was that Cahoo is not her favorite tool in the toolbox that we have with digital
resources because it is designed as a competitive tool.
And one of the things in my research I look at is what technology actually adds to the
learner and the learning.
So beyond it just being more convenient or it marking something for you or it getting
kids to practice rote learning, there's so much more we can do with technology.
And things like who are great, but people become very reliant on them as the one and
only thing they do with technology.
And also it is very much if you already know it, then you're going to do well.
it becomes a competition to get your name on the leaderboard, not a competition to understand
the content. So I'm really excited to hear that Kailia is doing things a little bit differently.
Sounds awesome. It does sound really exciting. Catherine, what's what's a recent experience
you've had with some success with digital technology in the classroom? I suppose I'm
really big on real world relevance. So and trying to find technologies and utilizing that technology
in society. So I come from my my big thing is looking at how society is changing and the
use of digital technologies in society and the benefits and the potentials that it's
happening out there and bringing that into the classroom. And one of my favourite ones
is when teachers are using Minecraft, there's a non-profit organisation called Block by Block
and they use Minecraft to give underprivileged people in communities a voice on how they would
design a space. And so real life scenario, architects come in and then they actually
build and design it in Minecraft and then comes to life. So that's a real standout. So any unit
that I've ever had any teachers looking for Minecraft, I might you've got to start off
with exposing students to that. And then some of the students were looked at Minecraft and said,
"Oh, what do you think of Minecraft and block by block?" And they're like, "Yeah, it was really good."
And I'm like, that's a very interesting way to describe it.
But you could see that they were able to make the connection away from just game-based learning
into things that they're using at home to seeing a real relevance of them utilizing Minecraft.
We got the students then to create and enhance a community area.
And then they thought about how they could support and target other people in the community.
So one of them made a roller coaster around the area of it, but made sure that their roller
a coaster ride would have, you know, people with access to wheelchairs and things like
that. So that's grade fives and sixes that were thinking outside of the outside of the
block for Minecraft.
That's so exciting. So when you do have teachers who are coming to you and saying they want
to do this for the first time, how do you support them? What's the what are the sort
of supports they need in order to do these things in the classroom? In my role as the
the ACS-ICT Educator Specialist and ACS is the Australian Computer Society. I support
teachers across Australia to implement the digital technologies curriculum. So they come
to me with a big idea. So they might say, "I want to use Minecraft in the classroom."
And I always say, "Well, I've got an idea. How do you think about this?" And so I'm
lucky enough then to go away, write up a unit of work, make sure it aligns to the digital
technologies curriculum. It's obviously at the forefront of it and then just provide
teachers with that supporting documents. One of the things that I find when it does come
to utilizing and using technology in the classroom is teachers need time and they just don't
have the time to be able to unpack what that technology can do, how it can relate to their
lessons and then creating a structure of a unit of work.
So a bit of time to actually play with the technology itself.
Yeah, yeah, so I write up the unit of work for them.
So one school has called me their fairy godmother of planning.
(laughing)
I like all type of, I take it.
Yeah.
Is that chance to play?
is we get them to break something first.
So we might give them, for example, a Minecraft world
and then ask them to get it to do something different.
So can you make it so that that hill isn't there or can you make it so that door swings
the other way or and so that they start with something that then they modify to make their
own. And so that gives them a space to play and explore and and also at their own ability level.
So even things like coding, if we're looking at something like Python coding, which is text-based
coding or we're looking at block-based coding, we give them code first and say this code plays
a really cool game, but we want you to make the game change in this certain way so that
when you hit the fish with the net, then they need to turn red, for example.
And so we put it as a problem that the teachers get to explore, but they already have something
in front of them, so it's not a blank screen.
So that play time is really important for the teachers, but also for the students as
well.
So we know that most technology has about a three week excitement life, if you want to
call it.
When you first get a technology in a classroom where you first use something new, so like
Minecraft or whatever, you have about three weeks where they're much more focused on the fact that
it's Minecraft or that it's a new robot or whatever. After the three weeks, you can start to move them
towards, let's ignore the fact it's Minecraft and think about the content. So building healthy
spaces, for example, or working out with the robot in a different way. Yeah. So that playtime is
really important and it needs to be structured slightly but not too much.
So it's a bit of a goldilocks situation.
And so initially there's got to be a decision about what is the digital
technology that's going to be used in the classroom.
There's so much out there.
There's heaps and there's more coming all the time.
So where can teachers go to find all these things?
Where can they start?
Well, I think first of all, the teacher, you kind of have to ask yourself,
how would I prefer to explore this space?
Do I want to watch YouTube videos, maybe on fast speed?
Do I want to attend a workshop where someone
shows me what the buttons do with some technology?
Do I want to read case studies of other teachers?
But I think the first thing teachers should do
is look around them in their school
and see who is doing what.
Because invariably, there are teachers in the school
doing something cool with technology
that you probably don't know about.
And so I would say the first thing to do
is to go and look and watch,
attend a lesson, get them a coffee at lunch
and actually use those physical resources around you
because that demonstrates that that technology
already works in your setting, in your context.
So I think that's a really good place to start.
I've got heaps of connections
and there's so many questions that are constantly happening
and what's a good app or what's a good technology
that I could use?
And you have that band of teachers that come from across Australia with it.
There's Victorian teachers online community, I think is one where it's a,
and then there's a Melbourne teachers one.
So that's based in Victoria, but there are so many.
There's STEM Australia out there.
And there's lots of teachers that are asking questions on whether it's
technical advice on how something's not working.
And I've even seen posts of code or videos that have been taken in the
classroom when something's not working and you can look towards that network of teachers.
Twitter is also a great place to find more teachers and it's those like-minded teachers
if you're someone who's ready to explore more technology but really don't know where
to start.
Look at that virtual networks.
Coming from a school that isn't very pro-technology, I think that it's generally easy to start with
ones that maybe teachers already kind of use and then starting off with those ones so that
it feels like it's an achievable goal for them
before you start introducing things like Python coding
and things like that, these like big words
that people can sometimes be a little bit scared of
and like, "Oh, I don't really know how to do that.
I'm not sure if I'm ready to teach that."
So by starting off with, do we know how to use Word?
Do we know how to use PowerPoint?
Like I will never forget very much,
like my first semester, my first term of teaching
and I asked my Year 9 students
to upload something onto Compass
and they didn't know how to save a Word document
And I was like, how?
What?
Like it was just, it was just, it blew me away
because I just assumed knowledge.
And I'll just, I literally will never forget that.
I was like, okay, all right, well, we have to go to file
and then you go to save and maybe put it in a folder
and things like that.
So.
with those sort of basic programs
that a lot of people perhaps aren't unlocking
that full potential of the programs.
Is that something that you're noticing
that you're saying or? Yeah, so there's, so when teachers start to engage with technology, they come
from a pre-technology space and they bring their pedagogical knowledge. So they're understanding
how teaching and learning works, how students learn, what they should do and shouldn't do in
the classroom. So they bring that to the technology. And then we find that in order for the technology
to be used to its best advantage, you've got to work with them to move beyond those really comfortable
pedagogies of let's do a group activity and then everybody show their PowerPoint, right?
That's a very comfortable kind of pedagogy that people get into. And so we let people explore
the technology first and then we start to push them and we say, "Did you know that with
PowerPoint you can actually turn it into an interactive story or choose your own adventure
story?" And then we move beyond and say, "Well, you know, Google Drive, they could all be making one
PowerPoint slide. So we move them forward so that the pedagogy is shifting because we want to draw
on what they already have and then acknowledge that they are experts and they have expertise,
but this is a different medium. It's a different tool and toolkit. And so we want them to build
on what they've got and keep moving. Catherine, is that something you build on in your lesson
planning? Are you sort of lesson planning for the students as well as the teachers?
Yeah, absolutely. So making sure that there is that structure for the students and also
the teachers, but most importantly giving them freedom and space to teach the lesson that they would
want to teach it. So we've all got our different pedagogies, we've all got our different styles
and one thing I didn't want to do is become really prescriptive with what they had to do. So a lot of
the lessons would just be, you know, an introduction, a couple of sentences long, there's a learning
intention, success criteria there and the body of the actual activity. How they do it is then
completely up to them. What technologies they use is also up to them too. So I'm finding that those
resistant teachers and those ones who are just kind of starting out, those out of field teachers
with the digital technologies curriculum have the guidance but also have the power to be making
decisions themselves and that's what's worked really well. We hope you're enjoying the show but
but we're just going to take a quick break.
Stick around though, because coming up,
we're going to discuss the potential impact
of AI tools on education,
the pros and cons of digital technology in the classroom,
and overcoming the fear of the unknown
by learning and playing with tech with your students.
If you are interested in exploring these ideas further,
check out our range of postgraduate study options,
including our Master of Education in Digital Learning.
Head to our website for more information
at monash.edu/education/learnmore.
There's so many exciting opportunities
in the world of digital technology to explore.
But for now, let's get back into the episode.
So in recent times,
there's been the introduction of things
around artificial intelligence and AI.
How do you see that as being something
we can harness in education?
because I think it is really exciting.
And I don't think we need to acknowledge
that there is always going to be change.
And this kind of our generation,
and everybody alive now is living through more change
in their lifetimes than any other human generation
in history, even more than, you know,
faster than the Reformation and Renaissance
and all of that stuff.
So there's a lot of change,
and we need to kind of embrace that.
But artificial intelligence is not something
that is self-aware at the moment.
And I think that's a really big thing
that people think you talk about chat GTP or Dalai
for generating AI images.
You need to remember that it has no worldview.
It has no understanding of you as a person.
It doesn't actually know what it's writing.
It has an algorithm, it's drawing on a database.
And I think once we start to understand
how it works a bit more,
we can start to see the potential use in education.
And also we can start to see how we make use of it
rather than it doing things for us
as some kind of assistant.
How do we use it in our teaching and learning?
And I think there's a lot of ways it can be used.
Summarizing, drafting, creating new ideas,
developing counter arguments, all of these kinds of things.
There's lots of critical thinking involved
in the use of AI in education.
And it's a really great opportunity to get kids to start thinking about,
"Do I trust what's on the internet?"
So if you ask some of the AI systems the date, for example,
because it's drawing on a database, these databases are not online, they're not live.
So it thinks the date is two years ago.
And one of them thinks it's 2019 and has never heard of COVID.
And it will try and convince you that it's 2019,
which is a very, very obvious error on the internet.
So we can use these kind of things for kids to start saying,
"Well, if this is wrong and everyone thinks it's infallible, what else am I reading online?
How else am I interpreting visual media and videos and images?
What else is not quite accurate?"
So I think it's really exciting.
I think it's going to demand eventually a lot of change for teachers because traditional
methods of assessment, like for example, writing an essay, what's the benefit of writing that
essay?
If you're writing an essay to teach essay writing, absolutely.
But if you're writing an essay on a certain concept
so that it can be, so that you demonstrate
the students' thinking, there are other ways
to do that that AI can't do.
So the humans still bring that stuff to it.
So it's really exciting and I'd encourage all teachers
to kind of think about how they can use it
and just try it in the classroom and see what happens.
It will not take over and run the class for you.
So it's not self-aware.
So the last thing I'll say briefly is that we're never going to go backwards with AI.
We are at the low point of this curve right now.
So AI is just going to keep getting smarter and smarter.
And when you read about the fact that these chat GTP and other systems are not self-aware,
they always put the word "yet" at the end.
Because in our lifetimes in the next 10 to 15 years,
there will be self-awareness in these kind of things.
So if we leave off using and exploring them,
then we need to, well, we'll be faced
with an even bigger challenge down the track.
to be worked with in education,
but particularly to support students to learn,
to think critically, and to take transferable skills
into industry and into work life with them.
How are you seeing that potential being used at the moment?
So what we're talking about today is the generative AI tools
that are available today.
That'll change in a week.
So what we can do with students is we
can give them a context and a space in an AI environment
to actually explore some of those soft skills
and some of those ideas.
So how do they collaboratively get together
and write a prompt that actually generates
what they are hoping to see?
How can they become critical about what the AI is actually
telling them is it accurate? When do we cross reference? Who is more reliable as a source
on the internet? Those kind of things. So students can take away a lot of soft skills
from that. But there's also a huge amount of literacy involved. So literacy skills,
not just in writing, but also in expression. So in AI, because it is a computer, it is
essentially an algorithm, which is lines of codes put together, obviously very complex.
But these algorithms just try and make sense of what we put in.
So from a student perspective, they have to have quite strong literacy skills in order
to be able to write a prompt that makes sense to a machine.
And so there are a lot of things that can get wrong, but there's a lot of things it
can do for us.
generate examples, it can summarize, it can create games, it can write code so that you can then put
that into another piece of software and generate something else. It can create PowerPoint presentations,
it can do every calculation under the sun, but if you don't have the literary skills to understand
what you're actually trying to do, then it has absolutely no use to you. So I think the literacy
skills, digital literacy and traditional literacy, as well as those soft skills, really mean that AI
has this huge potential. But as the tools change, the potential will change as well.
So we're going to have to keep our eye on it to see exactly where we end up in 10 to 15 years.
So is this still a bit of fear when it comes to technology? Is technology still a little bit of
a dirty word in education, do you think? It's hard to say, but there's the silver lining if we can,
if we're past COVID enough to say there is a silver lining to COVID is that particularly in
Victoria every teacher now knows how to hold an online class, right? They know what's possible,
they know what's not, they know what they are happy doing and what won't work. So there is definitely
still personal differences and what we know from research is that teachers are more likely
to use technology if they are aware of the global changes to daily life. So if you can collect back
to the fact that you can hire someone as a virtual assistant from overseas and never meet them,
but they are your virtual assistant, or you can do your banking online and you can do your shopping
online and you can get everything delivered to your house online. And if teachers are really
embedded in that kind of global awareness of how life is actually changing and will change,
continue to change, then they are more likely to persevere with technology in the classroom.
So we know technology doesn't work the first time or the fiftieth time sometimes.
But we know that perseverance and the ability to say, well, that didn't work,
but I'm going to try it this way next time.
That's a really big thing that we want teachers to be developing.
And so I think post COVID, we have these skills that we want to build on.
So COVID's done a little bit of good.
I think it gave teachers a space to fail as well, because they weren't the only one
in the situation where perhaps they hadn't ever used Teams or WebEx or Zoom.
They'd never used it, but suddenly the whole school was using it and so they had a supportive
learning environment for it as well.
So I think there are some benefits out of that kind of massive push towards online that
we need to capitalize on now before those skills kind of get forgotten.
Yeah.
I think it provided like forced play time almost because I think that's something that
we struggle with from a practical standpoint as a teacher is that there is only so much
time.
by acknowledging those global applications of it maybe then it would become more important
force teachers to then force themselves into that playtime in the same way that COVID did
because I think from like a practical standpoint in the classroom or when you're planning and
things like that, I mean you only have so much time so are you really going to dedicate to
yourself time to just play with the technology for the fun of it? Like I mean it depends how much you
how important you think it is because if you don't see the importance of it then you're not
going to force yourself to play with technology because you just don't see the value in it and
then you wouldn't see the value in it for your students. So I think it's important to push for
that value and maybe providing more time so that teachers aren't a little aren't so scared of
technology and just by talking about it in a like a friendly way almost so it doesn't become such a
dirty word almost. So that the teachers can be a little bit more excited about it and can push
for it and then hopefully get the students on board as well. Yeah it's that fear of the unknown.
And I find that there's a lot of teachers who don't know how to use the technology and saying to them
You can learn with your students like you don't have to you're not the the technology skill master in the classroom
You're the master of the pedagogy and if you understand the journey that and where the students need to get to
how it happens along the way and the bumps in the road and everything else is part of the journey and
And there are so many other sites out there and resources online that can explain the
technology much better than me.
And so I rely on those resources.
YouTube is amazing.
How often do we use that to find something?
I always tend to put it, play it on double speed and then get rid of the introduction.
I'm like, I just want to get straight to the point.
But having that is a resource to help your students and really having the experts in
the classrooms and the ones that are passionate about that too and want to
explore and will do the playtime in their own time gives them an opportunity to be
part of that learning experience too.
Well it's interesting because we always tell our students that it's okay to fail
but then as teachers we're kind of scared to fail because we don't really want to
fail in front of the students so it's kind of interesting because I mean if
you were to allow yourself as a teacher to kind of be on that edge maybe then
that would encourage the students as well to be like okay well they're doing
So maybe it is okay for me to have a go as well because they're putting themselves on the line and like
shelving to the students that it's okay to have a go at different things and it's okay to fail and
Maybe that would be a really good learning curve to have with the students as well. Yeah, I think that fear of failure
You're right. We always teach it to our students, but then as teachers they are the fear of failing in front of them
It's a bit of a rethinking of what it means to be a teacher. I think yes
Because traditionally a teacher is someone who knows all of the content and can answer all of your questions
but these days that's not what a teacher is because Google knows all the content.
We want to think about being a teacher as being a learner.
So some schools now even have renamed their principals lead learner and the
of the school lead learner of the school and then a teacher is the lead learner in the classroom
and they lead the learning. They don't deliver learning as a commodity but they actually inspire
it. And so yeah if you have that kind of mindset or if you can find a way just a little bit to
get into that mindset, it's much more likely I think that you will try something in the classroom
and if it does not work, like you can't, nobody can log into Minecraft and you had this whole
thing planned and or the internet goes down or a kid's broken something, then you have the resilience
to say, you know what, we're just going to figure this out together. And not assuming that all
children know everything about technology, of course, but understanding that they're learning
and we're learning at the same time. So there's definitely still that fear of not being able
to do whatever it is you're wanting to do with technology. But I think if you can find your
way to move towards the idea that you are a learner in the classroom too, it takes a bit
of the pressure off because learners get to fail. So what if it's just not your thing?
What if technology just doesn't float you about, doesn't interest you?
What does that mean for the students in your class?
What does it mean for their learning
if you're just not up for it?
from first year of schooling to the end.
So your impact is part of that journey,
but it's not the whole journey.
So take some pressure off yourself first
because it's not everybody's job
to fully educate everyone from A to Z, you know?
But the other thing is start from the students,
start from what the students need and what they should be learning so that you're not
thinking about, oh someone said I have to use Padlet, you're not thinking about that,
you're thinking about okay I want my students to start thinking critically about, I don't
know, microcosms or whatever and I want them to start categorizing things or I want them
to start doing this kind of thinking and this type of learning because that's appropriate
for them and a teacher who's not engaged with technology will already be doing that and
Then the next thing is to say,
there's probably a way technology can help me do that
in a slightly improved way.
And don't start going off making 3D movies of the world.
Start off by saying,
"Is something like Padlet gonna help me?"
And then go and look online.
So all of the ones these guys have said are great.
Pinterest is also huge.
YouTube is your friend.
But if you just type in the name of any software
and in education,
you will find case studies and images and videos.
but start from where the students are.
So you don't have to be the computer science teacher
for every child, but you do have to have
some digital engagement because we believe education
is about preparing young people to be effective
and helpful and healthy and happy people in society.
So if we don't prepare them with technology,
then they don't have the same opportunities
going forward in their adult life as everybody else.
that I was maybe cautious of when you said,
well, what if it's not for me?
Well, I do worry then, like,
we do need to make sure that we are preparing these students
for the real world.
And unfortunately, technology is such a big part
of the real world.
So, and maybe just, maybe not even overthinking it.
Like, maybe you don't think technology is your thing,
but I mean, at the end of the day, you probably use,
companies, you probably use email,
you probably use the internet.
Like, maybe you don't think of it as such a big, scary thing.
Think about, okay, what do you already do?
Because you probably already do use technology.
and then utilize the technology that's already at the school and you don't have to do every
single lesson with the technology focus. If you are planning out your year now, always
give yourself a term to skill up a little bit. So don't just think, "Oh, I need to implement
it immediately." Give yourself that just some space, a space to learn yourself and when
you're finally comfortable with it, then put it into the classroom. And then take one piece
of technology once you've made the choice on which one you want to use, use it once,
use it twice, use it three times and become really confident and comfortable with that
technology too.
So it sounds like this is quite an exciting time to be considering digital technology in
education.
There seems to be so much going on and so much opportunity to bring digital technology into
the classroom.
What's exciting the three of you at the moment?
It's something that you're excited or that you'd like to try and perhaps take that risk
and model that persistence with.
I'm starting off, I'm designing a game for a year 10 digitette class, designing a game
in Unity.
So it's a platform, freely available for educators and students.
And so I'm learning how to design a game in Unity at the moment.
So I'll need a little bit of Python experience with that.
So I'm trying to skill myself up with that, but even just looking at what's out there
in some of the games that people have been making is amazing.
A lot of them are available through iTunes and the App Store too.
So, you know, just getting those students inspired about games and that real innovation
creativity with it too.
So a lot of people at my work are always very jealous of what I do and they're like, "Your
job's fun."
That's because I make it fun.
(both laughing)
Oh, that sounds so exciting.
Yeah, yeah, it's completely unknown to me at the moment.
Never, I've done two or three tutorials in it.
So I've got the basis of it,
being able to change the color of a character
and the backdrop at the moment.
But, you know, it's really, I'm really enjoying it.
I can also see it from a teacher's point of view
of what do we need to provide them
as far as the resources and tutorials.
when they are starting from scratch like this,
what resources do they need or where do they need to go?
So to, you know, what are the best tutorials
if they are starting out,
where can we provide them with that starting point?
Give them that support from the beginning.
Yeah, yeah, cool.
Kailia, what are you up to?
I'm very excited about AI.
Like as soon as you started talking about it,
I was like, oh my goodness.
Yes, and I'm like, I'm using it all the time
for all different stuff, not just teaching,
just because I'm so excited about it,
but I also kind of want to find the flaws in it,
which sounds so silly, but I'm like, so where does it end?
Like what, what does it stop?
But then on the other hand as well, moving away from AI,
I'm so excited about all of the different things
that are going on, like definitely working now at Monash as well.
I, it, it like opened up so many different things
of different technologies that are actually out there.
And it's so exciting because there are just so many
different options.
It kind of makes it sometimes difficult to choose
which one we do want to put into the classroom
because there's just so many options
and they're all so exciting.
So I'm not sure yet.
I don't know. There's too many.
You're still exploring.
Yes.
Joey, what's got you excited at the moment?
I'm always playing with something.
So this week, I'm all excited about the use of holograms in education.
So I've done a fair bit of work in schools and with research around virtual reality.
And so taking a group of students and putting them in the Rome Coliseum
or under the ocean or wherever and then having them be able to turn their heads
and see different things so that it's not the videographer's perspective.
they're seeing, it's their own within this created 3D space.
And Holography takes that a little bit further,
where you don't need headsets.
You can buy now very easy to use printers for holograms.
So they're starting to use them in schools
so that students can build, for example,
a model of a human heart and have it
and hold it in their hand without headsets on
and actually turn around.
So the difference is that you don't need a headset,
but you can still walk around these objects in 360 and see everything in three dimensions.
And that's technology is already there.
And it's it's just an extension of what we already have.
And these little steps forward create these amazing, exciting new technologies.
And it's our job as teachers to think about that looks cool.
But what does it actually bring to the classroom?
Well, you three have been inspiring and exciting to talk with today.
but I just want you to leave me with what's the greatest piece of advice that you've ever been given,
the one that's stuck with you, that you've carried with you through your teaching and through your work.
I'll go first if you like.
So something I think about often when I'm teaching is talk about your failures, particularly with technology.
So I had a fabulous principal in a school many years ago now who I would say,
"Can I just try this with, I want to get one iPad
"and I want to get one digital camera
"and I want to do this."
And he'd be like, "Sure."
And he would always come in and watch the classes
and it would never work when he came, of course.
But he would always say, "Talk about your failures."
So talk to the kids about what it feels like
for it not to go well.
Your thought process about what's gonna happen next,
what you'll try next, will you give up on that
and move on or will you keep going?
So that kind of idea of share your failures,
I think, has always stuck with me.
I think that the most important thing I'm kind of going to semi-steal it is reflection
and the importance of reflection in all that you do, not just in technology, but in everything
that you do.
Really reflect on, you know, how did this work?
Would it work with the different thing?
Would it work with other students?
How could you make it better?
How would you tailor that for other people?
So really thinking about the technology and then reflecting on, you know, its purpose
for the future.
So not always thinking, okay, you know, that was great or that didn't work, but what next?
So how do you apply that in the future?
why you're doing it and just to really have a think about it.
So you wanna be able to have that technology
in the classroom, but just take a step back from a moment
and justify why you're using it, what purpose does it have?
And think about then the benefits that it has
on the students and they're learning too.
that's what we're all here for.
And I think that you can have that.
I had a principal that always made me do that.
So I was like, I really want to do this.
She's like, but why?
Tell me more.
Give me a really good justification.
And it made me go away to really think the purpose
from a teaching point of view,
from a student learning point of view,
from a curriculum point of view.
And then I would go back to her with all of those answers.
And then it helped me evaluate
what would be a good use of technology at the school.
Thank you all so very much for joining me in this episode.
It's been wonderful to talk to you all and like I said, really inspiring and so many
great ideas to get us thinking more about digital technology in the classroom.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Join us next episode where we discuss what it's really like teaching in a rural or remote
school, including the challenges and rewards of working in those environments and becoming
part of a wider community.
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