Infusing 21st-century technology in a 21st-century education

Infusing modern technology into a 21st-century education is, at the very least, a student expectation. Computers and the Internet, for most of them, are the modern equivalent of the No. 2 pencils and scrap paper of long ago. They already take ownership of this technology, making it unnecessary for educators—from kindergarten through higher education—to convince students that its classroom use will help improve their learning and thinking.

Rather, the immediate challenge for today’s educators is to use technology not because it is expected, but to truly understand how to appropriately infuse it into their curricula, says Joe Lodewyck, MSCIS, Director of Academic Data and a faculty member at University of Phoenix. To do this, he says, not only enhances student learning, but provides them with the solid foundation to become tomorrow’s global citizens and workers.

Today’s educators, he adds, must “try to find and implement those technologies that are most appropriate for learners in the classroom, but those educators also should truly understand how to use those technologies … and not just to use technology for the sake of using it.”

Today’s most useful technologies

Contrary to popular perception, innovative educators do not need to master the many existing and impending 21st-century technologies in order to run a great curriculum. Instead, Lodewyck says, the most effective educators select a few key technologies that allow students to connect to the curriculum, as well as learn beyond the classroom. It is a matter of educators investing in their students’ technological interests and then working with those students to master the technologies together, but at a speed conducive to individual student learning.

“The technologies that are most applicable to most any classroom are the collaboration technologies that allow the educators and learners to extend the classroom beyond the class itself, as well as allow students to connect to the class at any point in time,” he says. Google Chrome™, social media, wikis, blogs and crowdsourcing are all examples of how collaboration allows “students to be integrated in the class in their own way” while simultaneously using technology that helps them reach out to the world beyond.

“It’s important for students to understand that they are not always going to interact in the world within the four walls surrounding them.”

As an educator at University of Phoenix, Lodewyck believes cloud computing works best among his student learning teams because it allows them to learn via an online program yet connect with one another across different time zones. On the flip side, Lodewyck is also a University of Phoenix doctoral student who finds advantages of cloud computing because he can engage in team projects or research without being tied down to a particular operating system or platform.

“The cloud is one of the strongest technologies,” he says. “It’s not only something that can be used today, but is also an important technology for the future” at all grade levels.

From speaking with K-12 educators, Lodewyck finds they tend to provide a richer learning experience for student via smartboards and smartpens. These tools allow younger students to interact in traditional manners, but also learn and communicate in a technological manner. This is especially important for educators wishing to engage shy students fearsome of classroom ridicule because they can use these technologies to participate anonymously.

“The realization that needs to happen here is that technology doesn’t create student achievement. Proper curriculum and application of technology supports student achievement,” Lodewyck says. “Technology should allow students to integrate in the class in their own way.”

Supporting educators who support technology

Committing to the proper use and applications of specific technologies goes beyond the educator’s role, he adds. The onus is also on educational institutions to put factors into place that support the educators’ effective use of such technologies.

“This isn’t just technical support,” he explains. This is the kind of support that includes hiring technology staff specializing in the effective implementation and training of technology within the learning institution.

This support staff goes by different names, but are most commonly referred to as education technology specialists. This role, at the K-12 level, is part of a school district administration and collaborates with teachers to support their technological uses within the curriculum by providing technology training, professional development, and other efforts to streamline an effective technology-driven curriculum.

“I don’t think that this role’s importance has been fully realized just yet, but I see it as up and coming,” says Lodewyck, who is pursuing University of Phoenix's Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership with a specialization in Educational Technology program.

Such staff can enhance educator comprehension and use of both current and emerging technologies, which he says is important especially as mobile technology opens more doorways to student learning.

“It’s not just the idea that technology and its uses are important to educators,” says Lodewyck. Embracing technology and a supporting staff simply magnifies that educators are at the 21st-century threshold and need to adapt accordingly in order to realize the promise that technology holds for student achievement.

“Technology means that education overall needs to reinvent itself” with the times.