I was born in Jamaica, where they had technology that rich countries had donated because they were receiving updated versions. As students, it was a great joy to help with unloading the donated chairs and desks from the trailers, fresh from the Kingston port. When I moved to New York at 17 years old, I would marvel at how far ahead Americans were with technology.

America’s leadership is also evident in technology for teaching and learning; with schools using Student Response Systems like iClickers, Learning Management Systems like Canvas, and companies like Microsoft and Google, makers of Word processing apps. 

When I started attending the University of San Francisco, I was pleasantly surprised that they used Classroom Response Systems like Top Hat, which I piloted for the ( CIT ) Center for Instruction and Technology. The reason for my surprise is that before moving to San Francisco in 2015, I taught English in China, from 2006 to 2015 and I had never heard about Classroom Response Systems until I attended USF. In my mind, USF is on par with Stanford University when it comes to adapting innovative learning technologies. 

So, my podcast is to examine how students are using these technologies in their everyday lives. Please listen, comment and explore.



How Students Use Tech In Education.output

When teaching with technology, it is best we rethink the art of instructing students. So today, I will look at understanding by design, in a series of interviews to get the perspective of different stakeholders, as I am in the process of creating a lesson with technology in mind. The buzz word for today folks is, “understanding by design”. This involves several steps and the first phase we will look at today is, building empathy, presumably for ourselves, but mainly for the students we serve. My interviewee is Ken, a technology coach at a leading private university in San Francisco, a city that is known for its leadership role in technology. It was a good interview, I asked three questions and got some insightful responses, to what makes teaching in a technology rich environment excites the interview as well as make him nervous. The last answer he shared with us was, how his training of faculty and staff to use technology has changed, once he became a more seasoned educator.

Edwards C. Robert