ACOT Stages of Technology and My Work in the Classroom

Screenshot of Proloquo2go, a communication app that we have some of our students use. Image source: Apple App Store

            My family got a Windows 3.1 computer in 1993. I was five years old. My parents needed it for work, but we got a package of CD-Rom games with it, which my sister and I were allowed to play. At the time, I was just focusing on putting in hours with Reader Rabbit and Spider-Man Cartoon Maker, but now I realize that I was very fortunate to be exposed to technology in my home at such a young age, even if it was initially just for games. As I grew up, we moved from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP, and I used the computer every day through all of the upgrades. As a result, new technology comes relatively easy to me. I certainly couldn’t get a job fixing computers at a Best Buy or an Apple Store, but computers and other technology are intuitive enough for me that I can usually pick up new things in that realm pretty quickly.

            This has been particularly helpful since I started working at elementary and middle schools two years ago. As my district has integrated more and more technology into the classrooms in which I work, I have often become the de facto tech guy among the teachers and TAs that I work closely with. It’s not that I am an expert in educational technology or technology in general (I’m not), but I’ve become savvy enough with technology over the last twenty years that I’m usually able to figure out how to fix problems that come up in the classroom. I’ve become well acquainted with hardware such as iPads, Apple TVs, and SmartBoards, as well as software and apps such as Proloquo2go, Book Creator, and Canvas, all of which I’ve used in the last year in my multiage middle school special ed classroom. Additionally, I use Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms for data collection and other correspondence with teachers, which has been extremely useful as empirical data has started to loom over public education.

            Looking at the stages laid out in Apple’s Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT), I find that I fall somewhere between stages four and five, appropriation and innovation, although I see more of myself in the description of stage five. It’s tough for me as a TA, since I can make suggestions to the teachers I work with but I do not actually have direct control over how and which technology is used in my classroom. I certainly do not use technology in every lesson, which pushes me out of the fourth stage. I prefer to use it only when I feel it is valuable which, with the incredible variety of educational technologies out today, is a little under half the time. We have some technology in our classroom, both hardware and apps on the student iPads, that we don’t use, but since all students at my school got identical apps regardless of individual utility, my special ed students don’t get much use out of quite a few of them. As a result, if there is excess in my approach to educational technology, it is not something I currently have much control over.

            On the other hand, while I am generally comfortable placing myself in stage five (innovation) that same lack of control over the direction of my classroom gives me pause. Part of stage five is a selectiveness with technology used in the classroom. While I am confident that I would be selective, and I don’t always agree with the way that technology is used in my classroom, I don’t yet have enough agency to exert much influence on this front. On the other hand, we use technology as only one component of our instruction rather than shoehorning it into every place we can, and most of the times technology is used it is not the only aspect of a lesson or assignment. For instance, I travel with one of my students to a general education science classroom every day, and we are currently working on mousetrap cars in order to teach physics concepts and simple machines. Students are working in teams to draw blueprints, study related terms and concepts, and construct the cars. At the same time, all students in the class are using the Book Creator app on their iPads to individually log and analyze their group’s progress. Technology does not overpower this project. Instead, it is used as an additional component to strengthen students’ learning. That seems to be the essence of the innovation stage, and I am pretty confident that I’ll be at that point by the time I have my own classroom, if I’m not there already.

            However, this study was done thirty years ago, so I think its levels are losing their value in the present, especially with younger teachers. Technological literacy has only been increasing over the last three decades, and more teachers who grew up surrounded by this technology are entering the field every year. Education professionals with stage four technology usage, who have embraced technology and are flailing in an attempt to use it as much as possible, are going to become less common as younger teachers who are comfortable with technology get through the first few stages before they even enter the classroom. If one grows up immersed in technology, she is less likely to be dazzled by new technology and to struggle to use it effectively. Instead, they will be comfortable with technology from the get go. Still leaning on a study conducted in an era where personal computing was still the domain of the very few and the internet didn’t yet exist in a form suitable for mass usage strikes me as folly in an era where technology has become one of the centerpieces of our society.