It is important for educators to provide students with the experiences and  develop their skills that will have them participate in a technological society. It is arguably more important for students in remote communities as they have limited access to these technologies outside of the classroom.

Teachers in remote schools cannot assume students have any knowledge of social networks, mobiles or basic computer skills. All teaching must be explicit. Students need to be explicitly taught the basic computing skills of how to research, copy, paste, log in and also the interactive skills required in an online lessons including collaboration, and feedback. Though access to technology is limited within the community it is an issue of social justice that remote students be given the same opportunities as their mainstream counterparts. Teachers must prepare their students to be successful in the local remote context as well as the urban context where maintaining an online presence and use of technology is part of day to day life. Remote schools are expected to ensure their students will function well biculturally as they move back and forwards between the two contexts (Bartholomaeus, 2006). Teachers in remote schools must therefore abstract the principles of design that work in urban context to their remote Indigenous context.

Bower (2017) provided a chart of the various technology enhanced learning platforms and their associated benefits and potentials including their pedagogical flexibility, their ability to provide access and their communication affordances.

In reading it I began to wonder how technology enhanced learning could be mapped with the 8 Ways pedagogy devised by Yunkaporta and Kirby (2011).

The 8 Aboriginal ways of learning are a pedagogical framework to be used to develop practices and relationships with your local Aboriginal community. They are not supposed to be definitive as each community works differently.

The following explanation is from the 8 ways wiki:

Story Sharing: Approaching learning through narrative.
Learning Maps: Explicitly mapping/visualising processes.
Non-verbal: Applying intra-personal and kinaesthetic skills to thinking and learning.
Symbols and Images: Using images and metaphors to understand concepts and content.
Land Links: Place-based learning, linking content to local land and place.
Non-linear: Producing innovations and understanding by thinking laterally or combining systems.
Deconstruct/Reconstruct: Modelling and scaffolding, working from wholes to parts (watch then do).
Community Links: Centring local viewpoints, applying learning for community benefit.

Below is how I can see the 8 Ways linking in with affordances and benefits of platforms for technology-enabled learning.

	Web 2.0	Social networking	Mobile	Virtual worlds
Story sharing	Blogging, construction of narratives, use of videos and audios in wikis	Has the ability for short interactions but this pedagogy is based on longer dialogues.	Limited opportunity except when used as a phone.	The virtual world is a narrative and holds the greatest potential for this pedagogy
Non verbal Reflective and critical responses using non verbal methods.	Creating non verbal responses through pictures, videos, and music	Creating non verbal responses through pictures, videos gifs, emoji	Limited opportunity except as a vehicle for social networking	Very limited. There is difficulty following meaning when using avatars because of their limited expressions and movement
Symbols and imagery Use of art, objects and imagery to tell or respond to concepts	Photos, videos, images of objects and art can be used to understand concepts and to aid memory	Photos, videos, images of objects and art can be used to understand concepts and to aid memory	Limited but depends on the app. It often is the tool to create the photos and videos to be used in another platform	Symbols, motifs, art and images can be placed within the virtual world
Learning maps Includes learning intentions and success criteria as well as the learning journey and process.	Learning maps  can be included	Learning maps can be included	Limited	Learning maps can be included
Land links	Wikis, blogs and websites can include links to pictures, and videos of country and community.	Limited Facebook pages and groups of local communities	Apps can be used to represent data taken from activities on country.	The virtual world can build or create a version  of the real world or symbolically represent the real world locations
Non- linear The solving of problems using creative solutions and the integration of Indigenous and western knowledge.	Activities and tasks can be set that will entail higher order thinking.	Limited	Limited	The problems can be part of the quest in a virtual world.
Deconstruct/ reconstruct Working from the whole and then taking it apart and recreating it for a new context	Supports the understanding of the whole, creating, collaboration, reflection and evaluation for a new context	Can support exchange of ideas, reflection and evaluation of the process of creating within a new context	Limited	Supports collaboration
Links to community   Linking to the community and building relationships. Ways in which new knowledge can support the community.	Videos and pictures of community members used to support content. Supports discussion and ideas in which the new knowledge can support the community	Use of social networking to communicate with the community and have the wider community respond. Supports discussion of ideas of how to contribute to the community	Use of e portfolios in see saw and class dojo and other similar apps aimed at the parents/ family. Information with some form of reply only	Supports collaboration and discussion on ways to contribute

I would appreciate it if others to weigh in and add or argue the links between 8 Ways pedagogy and the relevant affordances and benefits of the technology.

References

Bartholomaeus, P. (2006). Some Rural Examples of Place-Based Education. International Education Journal, 7(4), 480-489. Retrieved 10^th May 2019, Free E-Journals database.

Bower, M. (2017). Design of technology-enhanced learning – Integrating research and practice. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group.

NSW Department of Education, n.d. 8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning an Aboriginal Pedagogy, 8ways.online. Viewed 21^st October 2019

Yunkaporta, T., and Kirby, M., 2011. Yarning up Indigenous pedagogies: A dialogue about eight Aboriginal ways of learning in N.Purdie, G. Milgate and HR Bell ( eds) Two Way Teaching and Learning: Toward culturally reflective and relevant education, ACER Press.

Mobiles and then smartphones revolutionised our communication and have impacted the classroom. Certainly, as a teacher, my smart phone is a mini-computer; it is my primary tool for accessing the internet and doing a range of activities in class (Carr-Gregg, 2019). It is the only type of communication in the school, I am constantly taking photos, videos and audio for assessment, their portfolios and our parent communications via Facebook or the newsletter, I use it to time activities, as a stopwatch in sport or science, as a calculator, a dictionary and a library.  I also use it to access the internet when the school network is down.

Mobile phone use is becoming more widespread in Indigenous communities and schools in these communities need to consider a range of cultural issues along with the issues of length of screen time, addiction and cyberbullying their mainstream counterparts are concerned with. 

In Indigenous communities, there are specific lines of communication; some people are not allowed to talk to others. When people use each other’s mobile phones or connect through social media ‘wrong way’ communication can result (Rannie, Yunkaporta & James, 2019, p.8). For some people, this is extremely upsetting and can cause severe stress and shame. Teenagers using mobiles to flirt and communicate ‘wrong way’ create deep concerns for Elders and community members (Rannie, Yunkaporta & James, 2019, p.8).

Indigenous communities have different notions of privacy and social obligations may dominate (Rannie, Yunkaporta & James, 2019, p.9). Consequently, mobile phones move around extended family members. In class, I allow my students to use my phone. I know that that is unconventional and I do not recommend it. I realized that their view of ownership was different and almost all of my students only access the photos I take of them for assessment and portfolios. In such communities, where privacy is not as valued, the school’s role in teaching online safety is critical.

Mobiles can support student’s health and well-being and may be useful for students on the autism spectrum (NSW, 2019). Some of my more at risk students who, when triggered, withdraw and sob uncontrollably for long periods will regulate their emotions faster if I drop my phone onto their lap so they can play their online games. I have folders on my phone for each of them. Anecdotally, their breakdowns have become less frequent and less severe over the year. I don’t connect that result with the use of the mobile phone but it has not created more outbursts.

As teachers, we are effective role models. In class I am constantly using my phone. Two of the key pedagogical aspects of mobile phones is that they can provide authentic and individual learning (Bower, 2017, p. 263). All my students speak English as an additional language so I use the phone to explain words they may not know. They use my phone in the same way. We do not have iPads and only sometimes use computers so my phone has become the classroom dictionary and research tool. I have noticed that students are beginning to use their computers in the same way. I was unwittlingly a role model in another way. I enjoy taking photographs and I chose my phone because of its camera. It is also the most expensive phone on the market. Some of the families bought the same phone even though they are on Centrelink payments. I was horrified. It underlined the need to teach consumer education.

Students who have experienced trauma and students who identify as Indigenous or as Torres Strait Islanders are amongst those particularly affected by cyberbullying (Carr-Gregg, 2019). My students belong to both of these  groups. The NSW review into non educational use of mobiles in NSW schools (2019) recommended banning mobiles from primary schools and extensive online safety programs for all year levels. It also recommended teachers be more adequately trained. Both these actions would support students in remote Indigenous schools. Elders need to be consulted and invited to support classes on the appropriate and safe use of online platforms.

They may not have mobiles now but the future is coming.

References

Bower, M. (2017). Design of technology-enhanced learning – Integrating research and practice. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group

Carr-Gregg, M., The NSW Review into non educational use of mobiles in NSW schools (2019). Retrieved 18^th October 2019 https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/strategies-and-reports/our-reports-and-reviews/mobile-devices-in-schools/review-into-the-non-educational-use-of-mobile-devices-in-nsw-schools#Bullying_28

Rennie, E., Yunkaporta, T., Holcombe-James, I., (2018) Cyber Safety in Remote Aboriginal Communities, Digital Ethnography Research Centre, RMIT University. Retrieved 18^th October 2019, https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2018/06/apo-nid172076-1208841.pdf

After doing a Web 2.0 unit in 2008, I launched enthusiastically into the world of wikis. My students weren’t as enthusiastic. The classroom experience did not achieve the level of student communication and peer feedback I had hoped for. A few students discovered these types of online tools have a management system that prevents inappropriate comments from being published and in a school network the comments are traceable. Important lessons for the fledgling troll but not necessarily the intent of that part of the curriculum unit. Now in a remote context I am again considering incorporating Web 2.0 tools into the classroom but I am more aware of what is needed for successful implementation.

One of the reasons educators are attracted to Web 2.0 tools is that they provide a space for students to work together and maximize each other’s learning. Through collaboration, students build knowledge more effectively than as individuals and they increase their social awareness, communication skills and language learning (Ismail and Al Allaq, 2019, p.2).

The tool itself doesn’t create collaboration that is the role of the educator and their lesson design. My students work well together outside the classroom. They organize and teach each other games, and work together to hunt. Inside the classroom they prefer to work on their own and I wonder if it is the imposed traditional teacher-centric and Eurocentric learning environment that has them feel in competition with other students and therefore unsafe working in a group. To incorporate Web 2.0 tools into the classroom I must consider how I can provide a safe space and explicitly teach the skills required.

Many of my students have transgenerational trauma and recent trauma and have irregular attendance. According to Karahan and Roehrig (2016, p274), Web 2.0 tools enhance collaborative strategies by providing a safe space to practise social skills and a sense of community which has been shown to improve motivation, engagement and academic achievement in at risk students and may provide my students with agency and security to effectively learn collaboratively.

Each Web 2.0 tool has specific skills the students need to master: keyboard and mouse skills, uploading, downloading, cutting, pasting, filing, inserting, and following information hierarchies. These skills need to be pre-taught and practised. Low literacy levels impact resilience to failure and students often need one to one coaching. Consequently, to incorporate Web 2.0 tools into a unit of work it may be necessary to introduce the skills a term or so beforehand to gain the necessary practice. Over this year I have incorporated technology into a number of units so my students have been doing a free typing program, making Word documents and PowerPoints to practise the skill sets needed for online tools.

Collaboration and feedback must also be explicitly taught and practised. Studies have shown that students are reluctant to give feedback if they do not know what to say (Bower, 2017, p.185). To teach my students about effective feedback I used “Austin’s butterfly’, which is a video about children giving feedback to a peer about how to copy a drawing of a butterfly. The feedback is effective because the students can see the original and so know what the drawing should look like and they are given parameters in which to provide feedback. The first was the shape of the wings and the second was the colouring. Their feedback is honest and positive. I had all my students draw the butterfly then give feedback on Austin’s attempt and then listen to the videoed class give feedback. With my support they followed the feedback suggestions for their own attempts.

 For Indigenous students the classroom is often not culturally safe as the education model is Eurocentric so they automatically compare themselves unfavourably with what they perceive is the correct way. This makes students feel vulnerable when faced with feedback and they can become paralyzed with shame. Students can get so upset that they will go home and not return to school for days. To create an environment where mistakes are normal and positive I have been introducing drafting and making mistakes for the whole year. I can now ask, ‘What happens when we draft?’ My students chorus, ‘We make mistakes’.

At the start of the lesson on ‘Austin’s Butterfly’ I gave them the lesson intention of ‘We are learning to give effective feedback”.  At the end, as a class, we discussed the success criteria for effective feedback. Students came up with straight, nice and one thing only (specific). We also discussed how Austin felt. Providing parameters (rubrics) for feedback, modelling it and providing lesson intentions and success criteria will support students to acquire the necessary skills for constructive and effective feedback.

Collaboration strategies must be scaffolded and practised too. The questions and actions for each role must be explicitly taught. I elicit possible questions in their own language and in Standard Australian English. We have been practising pair sharing and organizing pictures and sentences in pairs using specific questions in class. Another common strategy is assigning specific roles to members of the group (Bower, 2017, p. 202).

My class is still practising giving and receiving effective feedback and collaborating. It has given me some time to experiment and learn about various Web 2.0 tools. I am going to introduce a wiki and hopefully this time I have prepared my students in advance and it will be more effective than my first sojourn into the Web 2.0 world.

References

Berger, R., (2012) Austin’s Butterfly Retrieved on 8^th August, 2019 from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=hqh1MRWZjms

Bower, M. (2017). Design of technology-enhanced learning – Integrating research and practice. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group

Dohn, N. B. (2009). Web 2.0: Inherent tensions and evident challenges for education. International journal of computer-supported collaborative learning, 4(3), 343-363 Retrieved 1st October 2019 from Springer Standard Collection database.

Ismail, S.A.A. & Al Allaq, K., (2019). The Nature of Cooperative Learning and Differentiated Instruction Practices in English Classes, SAGE Open, 9(2), pp.1-17.  Retrieved 1^st October 2019 from SAGE Open database,

Karahan, E., & Roehrig, G. (2016). Use of Web 2.0 Technologies to Enhance Learning Experiences in Alternative School Settings. International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 4(4), 272-283. Retrieved 1^st October 2019 from ROAD: Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources database.

As teachers we know if we teach long enough ideas roll around on a great cycle. Sometimes its government based and other times we remember a useful tool we used to use but stopped. I last used Bloom’s Taxonomy in 2011. The school dictated that all faculties used it. It was a useful way of determining the type of classroom activities and assessment tasks. I stopped using it. In 2002 Krathwohl developed a taxonomy which is based on Bloom’s taxonomy and has a second dimension (see the table below).

The Cognitive Process Dimension (Krathwohl, 2002)

The Knowledge Dimension	Remember	Understand	Apply	Analyze	Evaluate	Create
Factual knowledge
Conceptual Knowledge
Procedural Knowledge
Metacognitive Knowledge

I am not going to explain each section here. The taxonomy focusses on the learning rather than the technology, so it creates a context for technology enabled learning  (Bowen, 2017 ). When I looked at the table, I realized that most of the technology used in my class recently was focussed on factual knowledge- remembering and understanding. We researched topics, found meanings of words and made some word documents. I decided to challenge myself and create a module using technology to support the range of thinking skills from lower to higher order.

My Year 4 to 6 students are all from non-English speaking backgrounds, so consequently their literacy levels are Grade 1 to 4.   We have a class set of laptops and the students have very basic skills. There is a diversity of skill levels in the class. A few are still learning how to open and save documents. Others can make power points, file and upload content.

The unit would have to meet The Australian Curriculum achievement standards which state that Year 4, 5 and 6 students suggest explanations for observations, compare their findings with their predictions and communicate their observations. They suggest ways to improve their outcomes. My unit would need to incorporate these achievement levels.

I started a unit on Chemical Sciences with a hook lesson where we made sugar crystals. It was this lesson I decided to extend.

I brought in some amethyst crystals which we looked at with a digital microscope and in a PowerPoint I introduced the vocabulary and information on crystals. We watched a short video about sugar crystals, how they formed and how to make them. We then made them and put them aside for 10 days. The challenge now was to extend this to enable higher order thinking skills.

My Plan

Lesson 2:  Review the video about how the crystals form and what may cause the sugar crystals not to form. Take notes as a class. Students use Word to write what they did and predict what their crystals will look like. (scaffolded writing)

Lesson 3: Students take photos of their crystals and download the photos to powerpoint.

Students discuss their results (and eat them) comparing them with their predictions.

Lesson 4: Students make a powerpoint presentation to explain how the crystals formed and evaluate their crystals and the possible reasons for the outcomes. In powerepoint students can use text or record their analysis. Students state what they would need to change if they were to do it again. They present it to the class.

 The Cognitive Process Dimension

The Knowledge Dimension	Remember	Understand	Apply	Analyze	Evaluate	Create
Factual knowledge	Lesson 2	Lesson 2		Lesson 3	Lesson 4
Conceptual Knowledge			Lesson 2	Lesson 3	Lesson 4	Lesson 4
Procedural Knowledge					Lesson 4
Metacognitive Knowledge

Each lesson repeats and builds on the one before which is appropriate for English as Another Language (EAL) students.

This lesson could be extended to research where crystals are found in Australia, the difference between gemstones and crystals, researching other ways of growing crystals.

Using the taxonomy had me reflect and consider the thinking skills activated by my lesson activities and the technology we were using in the class. It supported my planning and assessment.

Reference

Bower, M. (2017). Design of technology-enhanced learning – Integrating research and practice. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group

Krathwohl, D. (2002). A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212-218. DOI: 10.1207/s15430421tip4104_2

As a teacher I have technological knowledge that many of my non-teaching peers don’t have. I have had access to devices and to various software platforms and applications that support learning. According to the review by the American National Education Association, (cited in Ertimer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2013, p.177) teachers were more confident using technology for administrative purposes than incorporating it into their lessons. Like many teachers I see technology as a great idea but have little understanding of how and why to use it in the class (Ertmer, & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2013 p175). Those teachers who are passionate about STEM will introduce students to the fascination of robotics and lead them to think more creatively, not me.

When I moved to a remote school I was no longer a high school English teacher, I was a Year 5/6 primary teacher and therefore had to teach all subject areas. With the high turnover of staff I could not rely on someone else’s passion to drive the technological agenda; it had to be me. There were several obstacles to introducing technology in the school. An inventory of the devices available showed that only 4 of the 12 IPads and 5 of 18 Chromebooks worked. IT assistance arrived every 5 weeks for 3 hours and I had just missed it. I could not use the lack of hardware as an excuse not fulfil my responsibilities.

What was available were several disused laptops and towers. I also scoured the community for Phillips head screwdrivers. I finally found two at the art gallery and with an understanding that my life would be forfeited if I didn’t return them I borrowed them for the class.

Teaching is complex and one lesson may exhibit several pedagogies. My unit was underpinned by social constructivism (Bower, 2017 p. 44). I scaffolded the information and took into consideration the background and needs of my students. All are Kriol speakers so explanations need to be visual and vocabulary must be taught. As they live in a remote community they do not necessarily have the schema to understand the content and many experience transgenerational trauma and recent trauma so their working memory maybe affected. To support them activities must scaffolded and repeated.

Every lesson for two weeks began with a visual prompt, a video of the hardware, and using behavioural pedagogy names of the parts of the computer and their purpose were chanted. Within the lesson I moved from behavioural pedagogy to a constructionist pedagogy with a problem solving strategy. The students had to dismantle the hardware and find the parts and label them or verbally explain them. The unit was a success. I had to move the unit to the end of the day as it was hard to disengage students to move onto other subjects. Some of the Year 4 students came in after school to do the unit as well.

Reference List

Bower, M. (2017). Design of technology-enhanced learning – Integrating research and practice. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group Ch.3

Ertmer, P. A., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A., 2013,’Removing obstacles to the pedagogical changes required by Jonassen’s vision of authentic technology-enabled learning’, Computers & Education, Vol 64, pp175-182 viewed 20^th August, 2019, Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals Complete database