You might already be aware of the fact that my professional background is in elementary education. Upon reflection, it would be safe to classify my tenure in the classroom as less than conventional as I would consistently change my instructional delivery based on a variety of factors including but not limited to the learning environment, level of technology available to me as the instructor, technology available to my students, political and real-world relevance, and developmental appropriateness.
I began my teaching career in 2007 in a second grade classroom. At that time, 1 – 2 – 1 devices were not available in most places as the first Chromebooks wouldn’t make an appearance until 2011 lending their affordability to the elementary school classroom and forever changing the educational landscape (Ackerman, 2021). In saying this I want you to appreciate that in my 11 years of teaching, I went from a classroom limited in technology to delivering instruction in a flipped classroom, blended learning model.
Beginning in the year 2016, I began to explore the concept of a flipped classroom and what this would look like and what it would mean for the fourth and fifth grade students whom I taught. I wanted to ensure that in pursuing this as an option for my students each student would have access to the instruction, the instruction was engaging enough to motivate my students, and that learning was actually occurring throughout this process. Just because one participates in a learning experience or learning episode, it does not necessarily mean that learning has occurred (Kozma, 1994, p.8). Google Classroom had recently been released and rolled out in the district where I taught and thought it was very different from what we see now in its form and functionalities, it was still sufficient for use as a delivery method of links to instructional material.
In writing this, I have had the opportunity to go back and view some of the instructional material which I developed for my students in this era, more than 100 videos for my students with a focus on math instruction based on the Singapore Mathematics Framework. Viewing this work had me thinking about Wilson’s claim that aesthetics are one of the main pillars of instructional design (Wilson, 2005 as cited in Boling and Smith 2018). My instructional videos were rough, to say the least. However, these videos, this form of instruction was new and novel to the students. For the time, it was on the cutting edge and was different from anything they had experienced before in their short tenure in the world of formalized schooling. Everything had changed when I provided them a paradigm shift in both instruction and learning environment. So even though what I created may not look the best, the experience it afforded my young learners was exactly what they needed to push their learning forward (Parrish, 2009 as cited in Boling and Smith 2018).
References
Ackerman, D. (2021, May 11). The Chromebook at 10: How this ‘browser in a box’ became the perfect pandemic laptop. CNET. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/the-chromebook-at-10-how-these-stripped-down-computers-went-mainstream/
Kozma, R. (1994). Will media influence learning? Reframing the debate. ETR&D, 42(2), 7-19.
Parrish, P. P. (2009). Aesthetic principles for instructional design. Educational Technology Research and Technology, 57(4), 511-528.
Smith, K. M. (2018). The changing nature of design. In R.A. Reiser & J.v. Dempsey (Eds), Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (4th ed.). Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall.
Wilson, B. G. (2005). Foundations for Instructional Design: Reclaiming the Conversation In J.M. Spector, C. Ohrazada, A. Van Schaak, & D. Wiley (Eds.) Innovations in instructional design: Essays in honor of M. David Merrill. Routledge.
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