Technology and its roll within the ecosystem of a clasroom

Hello readers,   

  This week we had our first presenter Kristen Thompson visit our class "Internet For Educators". Her presentation was titled "Why I replaced myself with a machine", I found her presentation to be very insightful and full of valuable information. Kristen Thompson is a graduate from the educaiton program of Brandon Univeristy and was a former teacher, but now uses her wonderful skills with technology to help assist other educators in the Mountain Veiw School Division based out of  Dauphin, Manitoba. 

     Throughout Kristens presentation she touched on many topics but emphasized the importance of incorporating technology into the classroom by the means of the ecosystem mindset. This means how important it is for educators to incoperate technology into the classroom while still balancing what tasks or "Niches" individuals can complete without the aid of technology and the tasks that can be filled to help with efficiency within the educational setting. The overall enviroment or "Ecosystem" of the classroom is the most important aspect to keep in mind throughout the whole idea of incoperating technology into the classroom.  During the presentation we discussed what niches are irreplacable to technology, and what niches are replaceable to technology in the classroom. 

Some of the niches we disscused to be irreplaceable to technology:

• Summative assessment
• Relationships
• Content development
• Interpersonal relationship skills
• Inquiry support
• Differentiation
• Personal experiences, stories and perspectives
• Ability to empathize
• Classroom management 

Some of the niches we disscused to be replaceable by technology:

• Non subjective assessment
• Formative assessment
• Instruction reminders
• Instructions
• Video resources
• Content/Materials
• Agenda
• Large group instruction
• Multimedia

      As you can see most niches that could be replaced are tasks that involve transition, instruction, non subjective assessment, reminders etc... all these in a essence are programable tasks that anyone or anything could perform. With the aid of technology to perform these niches a classroom can become more efficent and a teachers time can be utilized more for students and performing the niches that are irreplaceable to technology. It is the way teachers learn to balance the use of technology and irreplaceable niches that will help the overall ecosystem of the classroom.  Thanks to Kristen Thompson for coming into our classroom and sharing insight on this importnat topic. Its always great to learn new prespectives on how to efficently manage and run a classroom. If you are more interested on this topic please leave a comment to this blog, or send me a email to continue the conversation of how we can intergate technology into the educational setting. Or follow Kristen with the informaiton found bellow.


Kristen Thompson 
Mountain Veiw School Division
Twitter
@misslwbt 
#14Ed

Thanks for reading, 
Bryce Keilback