Technology has come to define the modern world in such fundamental and basic ways. As the cliche goes, we are living in a digital world.
In the era where we are doing everything digitally, and the first thing a baby learns how to use today is a mobile phone, it absolutely boggles my mind that modern kids leave electronic gadgets at home to go to school. My question is, “to do what in that school and for which world?” Technology is not an option in Intaspordiasm because it will not be an option in your kids life. Your average “Academy” and its teacher's cannot imagine what a kid would be doing in class with a laptop or a tablet. I cannot imagine why and how I would run a school where kids don't have technology in class.
We at Intaspordiasmhave identified several ways in which Ed-Tech will play a central role in our school learning ecosystem:
Ed-Tech transforms the Intaspordiasm classroom experience from the traditional teacher-centered one into a student-centered experience – with students taking a more active role in their learning. Technology enables us to revise the classroom engagement from the traditional teacher centered pedagogy to learner centered pedagogy. Through innovative Ed-Tech we are able to introduce modern pedagogical designs of flipped classroom, Project Based Learning and Learner Paced Instructional Design in our pedagogy. This enables the Intaspordiasm teacher to become more of a guide as the students engage with and direct their own learning.
Technology provides Intaspordiasm teachers and students with access to almost infinite educational/learning resources that inspire creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration, key 21st Century Learning skills. By using Ed-Tech in the Intaspordiasm classroom, we promote inclusion and the development of digital literacy skills in our learners and we extend learning beyond the textbook – and beyond the classroom walls. Intaspordiasm learners use Ed-Tech on a routine basis onside the classroom. Tablets and Laptops are cmpulsory at admission. As an added advantage, Ed-Tech exposes Intaspordiasm students and teachers to new online global communities. This promotes a global awareness in our students and teacher which is an essential component to a 21st century education.
Adoption of Ed-Tech use in schools has been hampered by fear over misuse. This fear is not misplaced although it is secondary. The primary concern should be disuse... that teachers do not know how to use Ed-Tech for teaching and learning, and schools have not developed the ecosystem and institutional cultures where Edu-tech can be used productively. If you introduce Ed-Tech in such circumstances, learners will have to find their own use for the ‘Tech’ without the ‘Ed’ and thus the fear of misuse. @Intaspordiasm, I recognized this and I have made it a priority to capacitate our teachers to use Technology for learning and to be comfortable with students with laptops and smart phones in class. We have also created a modern pedagogical ecosystem where Edu-tech integrates effortlessly if not organically to teaching and learning. I believe very strongly that if there is a “good way” and a “bad way” of engaging with technology, then School is the best place to learn. @Intaspordiasm, we have changed the conversation from “If, technology” to “How, technology”.
There are different levels of students in any classroom – and with uniquely important learning needs. Through the use of Ed-Tech, differentiated instruction is made much easier at Intaspordiasm. With differentiated instruction, students are provided an education that is personalized – and that meets them where they are, developmentally.
And perhaps the most important of all the reasons why we have made integration of Ed-Tech a major pillar of the Intaspordiasm learning ecosystem is that in the 21st Century, it is of paramount importance that while in school, students use tools that will best prepare them for their future academic and professional experiences. Integrating technology into the classroom provides Intaspordiasm students with the set of skills to navigate through their digital world. It also provides teachers @ Intaspordiasm with opportunities to educate students on digital citizenship and the new challenges of fake news, communication in a noisy and confusing cyberspace, navigating the world of information and TMI (Too Much Information).
However, most teachers and curriculum implementors are digital migrants while the children they are teaching are digital natives. Our children know how to use a digital device before they can read and write and often, before they can even speak. It is therefore tragic that while introducing these children to learning, we are still largely analogue and ask them to leave their electronic gadgets at home and come to School. The lingering question here is, they come to school without their gadgets to learn what and for which world? It is impossible to deliver learning for the modern kid in the modern world without technology. This is why @ Intaspordiasm learning tablets for PP1 to Grade 1 and Laptops from Grade 2 onwards are compulsory.
But having gadgets is just the beginning and the easier part. Using them for learning has proved the greatest challenge in progressing towards modern learning in Kenya. Successful integration of Ed-Tech requires time, re-tooling, customization, experimentation, and support. These sadly are resources and competencies that your average Academy in Kenya does not have.
@ Intaspordiasm learning tablets for PP1 to Grade 1 and Laptops from Grade 2 onwards are compulsory.This is where we @ Intaspordiasm are ahead of the pack. We have expert trainers in Ed-Tech who continuously train and retrain our teachers in designing and implementing teacher capacitation programs for the integration of Ed-Tech in learning. We have teacher development pedagogical seminars every week and the bulk of the training is on use of EdTech and play.
Digital literacy skills are mandatory in the modern world. We define these as the skills a modern child needs to live, learn, and work in a society where communication and access to information is increasingly through digital technologies like internet platforms, social media, and mobile devices.
Digital Skills are skills a modern child needs to live, learn, and work in a society where communication and access to information is almost entirely through digital technologiesBy using media and technology in the classroom, our learners are able to pick up important digital literacy skills that they will need to thrive in a digital world. These include: ability to stay up to date with existing technologies; Ability to properly and effectively communicate in an online environment; Manage ideas in an online environment
And work with and manage teams leveraging technology.
In mainstreaming technology in the classroom and imparting digital literacy, we are cognisant of the greatest challenge of the 21st Century learning. When we were in school, the challenge was to get information. In the modern age, the challenge is no longer getting information. It is too much information. The greatest digital literacy skill is thus the ability to discriminate useful and useless information, select useful information and use it productively. This is a skill that cannot be taught. Our students must learn by doing.
We seek to ensure that our learners get equipped with these digital literacy skills in order to function optimally in a modern digital environment by:
These skills must be learnt in school, but should not be made separate from the routine learning process. This means that Ed-tech and Digital literacy must be built into our pedagogical designs. This means that Education and Technology are not two different terms @Intaspordiasm, they are deeply integrated, in fact, they are siamese twins.
I remind parents that technology has changed what it means to be literate in very fundamental ways. It used to be that the greatest challenge in school is where to get and how retain information. But in the 21st Century, the greatest challenge is no longer where to get and how to retain information, it is easily available and in fact there is a glut of it. The greatest challenge is how to discriminate and select factual and useful information from misinformation and useless information, and what to do with the selected information. This is not a small shift. In fact, in the age of AI, this ability alone will become a superpower. The illiterates of the future are not those who do not have information, everyone will have it. It will be those who cannot discriminate, select and creatively use information. @Intaspordiasm I have insisted on mainstreaming Ed-Tech to put your child ahead of the curve when it comes to acquiring these new superpowers.
When our teachers are doing their teaching designs, we have trained them to ask themselves two fundamental questions:Education and Technology are not two different terms @Intaspordiasm, they are deeply integrated, in fact, they are siamese twins.
Our teachers are trained to use Ed-Tech at several levels. The basic model we use in training them is the Bloom's and SAMR model developed by Kathy Schlock.
The goal for the teacher is to construct a simple SAMR ladder that is coupled to Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy -- i.e., as the task moves from lower to upper levels of the taxonomy, it also moves from lower to upper levels of SAMR. The two Enhancement levels of SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation) are associated with the three lower levels of Bloom (Remember, Understand, Apply), while the two Transformation levels of SAMR (Modification, Redefinition) are associated with the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (Analyze, Evaluate, Create). In turn, within each grouping a similar ordering occurs -e.g., Remember-type tasks are primarily associated with S-level uses of the technology, Understand-type tasks are associated with either S- or A-level uses of the technology, and so on. The following diagram illustrates this association.
Bloom and SAMR Model
To help the teachers @Intaspordiasm implement Bloom & SAMR model in their instructional design, we augment it with the Pedagogy Wheel developed by Allan Callington, which helps our teachers think – systematically, coherently, and with a view to long term, big-picture outcomes – about how they use Ed-Tech in their teaching. The Padagogy Wheel is all about mindsets; it’s a way of thinking about digital-age education that meshes together concerns about Ed-Tech, learning transformation, motivation, cognitive development and long-term learning objectives.
The Pedagogy Wheel:
The Pedagogy Wheel by Allan Carrington
We use such tools and others and continous teacher capacitation programs to institutionalise the Technology Pillar @ Intaspordiasm making us the leaders in EdTech enabled learning in Kenya.
Realising the need for integration of ICT in learning, some schools make claims of having integrated ICT in their teaching and learning. A close examination of these claims and attendant practices reveals a deep misunderstanding of education technology and sadly a less than benign misapplication of ICT. As a parent beware of these sensational claims that are meant to hoodwink you onto believing that your child is exposed to meaningful use of technology for his learning and for his/her future abilities to navigate the world of technology. Some of the ways on which ICT is being misapplied in some schools include but are not limited to the following.
Buying computers and putting them in a lab where students occassionally visit to “learn computers” is not educational technology. It is learning of basic and rather mundane ICT skills which are never applied in the teaching and learning process. It only reinforces in your child that “computers” and “learning” are two different things. These schools are reinforcing the warped idea that computers are something you learn, not something you use in your day to day learning. Like we have said, at Intaspordiasm ICT and learning are siamese twins. We teach our students that ICT is not something to be learned, it is something to be routinely used for learning. A school that claims that they have integrated ICT because they have “computer labs” has simply fossilised ICT and divorced it form the day-to-day learning experience of your child on school.
After they have established computer labs, these schools use the labs to teach basic computer skills and packages like MS WORD and POWERPOINT. Again, reinforcing the idea that such generic applications should be known for the sake of knowing them. MS WORD is a word processor used by all in generation documents. POWERPOINT is used by all in making presentations. The skill in Ed-Tech is to ensure that learners can use WORD to generate academic documents and write academic reports. That they can use POWERPOINT to design and make academic presentations. If they cannot do this, then what they are being offered is not Ed-Tech.
I have imagined a transformational educational space with many shifts, both conceptual and practical. But asked what our greatest paradigm shift is, I would say it is the “cross-play of play and Ed-Tech”. We have returned play to childhood; removed technology from play; taken play outside; and introduced technology inside the classroom FOR LEARNING. The average school has removed play from childhood; refused to incorporate technology in learning; and the children have on their own picked up technology for “play” oblivious of its role in learning.
These are just some of the misapplications of technology and only in a few schools that claim to have integrated technology in their programs. Most schools are still averse to technology and do not make even these misguided efforts to incorporate it. They are simply comfortable in the dark ages!
Fortunately for you, you now have a choice. If you want an education that links your child to their modern world, come to Intaspordiasm . We know the modern needs of your modern child and have the expertise, experience and competence to offer your child a truly modern learning experience, in an ecosystem where Technology is a major pillar.
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"Wholistic" education is a promise ....
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We are endowed in so many other things @Intaspordiasm, but we are unequalled in terms of sheer space and galItems for kids to play.
We are endowed in so many other things @Intaspordiasm, but we are unequalled in terms of sheer space and galItems for kids to play.