I love being inspired. I mean genuinely when someone shows you something and it then changes the way you look at things forever. George Couros has done this to me on many occasions. I cannot see a week where I won't value his blog or podcast. This week I watched his conversation with Ken Shelton about techquity. It was a revelation. Ken said "Not every student comes into a learning environment with the same experiences, same resources and same understaning and so if we continue to do towards the middle being the standard then there's just as much inequity as treating everyone differently."
That's it, that's the moment that will now change my approach to tech in the classroom. Teaching in FE we have an intake from every school and college across the county. We see it all the time that topics we expect to be covered at a lower level are not fully understood. We know we have to do mini refreshers on topics before we build on what should be existing knowledge. We know that when we teach fractions in maths we need to go over the basics before we move into addition and subtraction with fractions. We certainly know when we cover German history we have to recap GCSE content to access the A Level content. We would be shocked if we had made assumptions on prior knowledge. Yet, when we come to setting independent work we assume everyone can access our content. When we get the Chromebooks out in class we assume everyone can log on and access our material. This isn't techquity.
Why do we make these assumptions? In my case it's because I see learners with their phones and assume they have the technology at home to access my work. Or that they have the technical skills to get on with remote tasks. I am being honest, it is an assumption that I have made in the past and probably as recently as pre lock down made the assumption too. However I was in a purchase meeting with a software supplier and we didn't go ahead with the purchase because it didn't support historic iOs versions. I was only observing and I asked the meeting holder why it was important. He explained that yes our learners have iPhone but that they are old kit. They run on old iOs. I had never noticed.
I set a group of learners some work in Google Slides via Google Classroom. I wished them well and off they went. A week later I had no submissions, we then logged on in class and I couldn't believe the lack of digital skills that the learners had. Some didn't know how to insert text into Google Slides. Some had finished the task and forgotten to hit the hand in button. My assumptions were wrong.
We need to stop aiming for the middle and a one size fits all approach when it comes to our approaches to tech. We need to personalise our tech the same way we personalise the learning intentions. We need to make sure everyone has a fair shot and level the playing field. I don't know how this will look but after my inspiration today I am looking forward to seeing me try. SJ
