Michigan State University College of Education Technology Conference - Professional Learning Reflection

Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend the Michigan State University College of Education’s 33rd Annual Technology Conference on the Campus of Michigan State. The focus of this year’s conference was on equity in education. Through the lens of equity, there was tremendous discussion focused on what equity looks like and how we can guarantee a viable curriculum for all of our learners.

To start the day, we had a wonderful keynote presentation from Ruthe Farmer, the Senior Policy Advisor for Technology Inclusion at the White House and the leader of President Obama’s Computer Science for All initiative. During her opening keynote, she opened eyes about the lack of equity in our current schools, everything from availability of specific courses (over 500,000 students took AP Biology, but only 60,000 took AP Computer Science in 2016), to the types of careers that are available in the United States (600,000 Computer Science jobs available in the United States with median starting income of $75,000), and how we can engage families in beginning to use technology. Ruthe Farmer admitted that all students will not create the next Snapchat or Facebook, but all students do need to be aware of computational thinking. It is a process of thinking and recognizing how computers, software, and programs work. They do not need to be programmers or coders, but they need to be aware that their device doesn’t work by magic. Needless to say, Ruthe Farmer’s knowledge and ability to speak on the subject was incredible.

The real highlight of the day was having conversations about Universal Design for Learning and the Design Thinking process. Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is a system of ensuring that all of the learning, materials, and activities are suitable for all of your students. Dr. Nate Stevenson explained UDL in a way that made a lot of sense, describing it as something small that you may not notice. He used the example of the redesign of Target entrances to be barrier free. Examples that he provided included for our classroom is using bookmarks to help students find the proper lines to work on, covering math problems with post its to allow students to not become overwhelmed, and turning lined paper from portrait to landscape to assure that our students are getting their placement of decimals correct. This session was incredibly helpful, but even more helpful with the next concept covered, design thinking.

Bryan Dean combined the idea of UDL and brought forth design thinking. Design thinking is the concept of applying the design process to design of our lessons in our classroom. Start by empathizing with the problem. Think of why you would need to work towards fixing it. Next, you start to define the problem and explore what you think the root cause might be. This is taking into consideration all of the stakeholders in the process and thinking about how we can better serve the needs of our all learners. After you define the problem, you start to brainstorm and work through solutions. Doing this, you are keeping a record of what ideas you have and how you are sharing them. Next, you prototype and design something that you think will work. After, you test it. Does it work or not? If it doesn’t, you go back to the ideas and create a new prototype. This kind of thinking can greatly impact our practice. If we bring it to the students, it builds in one of Hattie’s biggest ideas on how students learn, the practice of reflection.

After lunch, we competed in a quickfire challenge that had us creating a short video on equity with a team. Think of Chopped or Top Chef, but focused on a non-edible process. It provided a lens into how our students might feel when starting something new for the first time and being constrained by the bells of our learning day. It was incredibly fun, and our product was terrible!

The conference used collaborative notes that are available on the conference website. Find a session and learn more about it.

The thing that I liked the best about this technology conference is that the focus was truly, deeply connected to the pedagogy and how learners learn. The focus had little to do with the newest, shiniest technology toys. Having the focus be on the pedagogy was what made this conference incredibly powerful for me. As educators, we must remember that pedagogy and focusing on how students learn is the most essential piece of any conversation about the technology tools that we want to use in our classes. Overall, I cannot wait to go back to the conference next year!