In the recent years, and particularly since teaching through the COVID-19 pandemic, technology has become an integral part of K-12 classrooms. There is a plethora of digital tools and resources readily available to educators, and school systems are jumping to implement the latest and greatest forms of technology in an effort to prepare their students to become 21st century thinkers and learners. This shift in the K-12 classrooms has put an even greater responsibility on teachers, both online and in the face-to-face classroom settings to choose appropriate, effective, and useful digital tools and resources to implement in their classrooms to enhance the content of their standards and to better prepare their students to become 21st century thinkers and learners. I have witnessed counties and schools purchasing various resources without conducting adequate research to see if it will truly benefit the schools, teachers, and students based on the current realities of each classroom in school. Teachers are being required to implement these resources when they in fact have very little impact on their students and the realities of their classrooms, and the end result is frustration amongst the teachers and students and loss of learning time. I believe one of the most important jobs we have as educators is to ensure that we are considering the needs of our students first before implementing various digital tools and resources in the classroom. Appropriate technology integrations allow teachers to personalize learning environments with activities around various learning styles such as auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning. Lokey-Vega and Stephens (2018) share the benefits of personalized learning with this statement “With equity in mind, personalized learning necessitates learners get interventions and supports as they need to optimize the pace of learning towards the learner’s full potential” (p. 7). Keeping this statement in mind, teachers should use technology to provide students with equitable opportunities to receive differentiated and personalized assignments that they need to attain success and mastery of the content standards by being offered a variety of modalities in their learning style and at their own pace. Personalized learning promotes responsibility, accountability, and bolster self-assessment skills among students. “Students are able to learn in ways that are best suited to how they acquire knowledge and according to their needs and interests” (p. 5). Personalized learning ultimately transforms the learning environment to focus on the needs of the individual students rather than gaining results from the class as a whole.
References
Friend, B., Patrick., Schneider, C. & Vander Ark, T. (2017) What’s Possible with
Personalized Learning? Vienna, VA: International Association for K-12 Online