It’s been a few years since I’ve been to ISTE, but I love the fact that I can follow the sessions through snapshots posted by those in attendance. If you are interested in following along do a search in Twitter using #iste18 or #notatiste18.

I’ve been following Eric (@E_Sheniger) for I don’t know how many years, and I have to say that what he posts is #spoton. Take the image above as an example. Without a doubt, these are great questions to use as educators reflect on their teaching and role in whatever capacity they serve within their organizations. But what resonated with me is the fact that these questions can also be applied when considering culturally relevant teaching.

In particular, I like the first three questions. Let me tweak them a bit:

• What evidence do we have to demonstrate the impact of technology and innovation within our multicultural school environment?
• How are we making learning culturally relevant for our diverse student body population?
• How do we implement and support rigorous and culturally relevant learning tasks that help our students become future ready?

Going back to my previous post regarding the total school environment, the “curriculum should recognize and reflect students’ multiple identifications” (Banks, 2016, p. 30). Because my doctoral research focuses on technology integration, I think we need to consider how technology and innovation can be used to support a multicultural learning environment. An interesting article I recently read highlighted the fact that immigrant students are using technology to develop their own identities as well as cultivate a strong connection with families from their home countries. Lam (2012) challenges educators to develop an understanding of “role of digital media in immigrant students’ learning experiences outside of school…[in order to] develop digitally connected forms of pedagogy that are also culturally responsive” (p. 63).

We cannot deny the role of technology in the lives of students today. So why not harness that power for educational use? The literature reveals a significant gap between how students use technology outside of school versus inside of school (Bryant, Coombs, & Pazio, 2014; Ertmer, Ottenbreit-Leftwish, Sadik, Sendurur, & Sendurur, 2012; Hall, 2010). Perhaps the development of culturally responsive teaching practices can help bridge that gap for our culturally diverse and immigrant students?

Let’s put that discussion on the table, shall we?

References

Bryant, P., Coombs, A., & Pazio, M. (2014). Are we having fun yet? Institutional resistance and the introduction of play and experimentation into learning innovation through social media. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2014, 1–8. do:10.5334/jime.ad

Ertmer, P. A., Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. T., Sadik, O., Sendurur, E., & Sendurur, P. (2012). Teacher beliefs and technology integration practices: A critical relationship. Computers & Education, 59, 423–435. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2012.02.001

Hall, G. E. (2010). Technology’s Achilles heel: Achieving high-quality implementation. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42, 231–253. doi:10.1080/15391523.2010.10782550

Lam, W. S. E. (2013). What immigrant students can teach us about new media literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 94, 62–65. doi:10.1177/003172171209400416