Taking some time to reflect on my teaching practices and goals is a yearly summer ritual for me. Usually this takes place in my thoughts and is never quantified in writing such as this reflection.

As I move through my Masters of Education, I have been prompted to reflect on various aspects of my teaching practice and once again this has occurred with my personal approach to using technology in my classroom. I would like to highlight that for the purposes of this reflection, I am identifying the use of a device related to subject material as “classroom technologies”.

As a pre-kindergarten homeroom teacher, I view technologies as a tool to create new, or add to, learning opportunities inside and outside of the classroom. This practice of mine relates to the “activities and practices” aspect of Lievrouw and Livingstone’s (2002) description of technologies . With this framework in mind, I can then take a critical eye to individual tasks and evaluate the role, if any, of digital technologies in those tasks. Therefore, classroom technologies are not used as a “wow factor” to impress but to provide additional learning opportunities for students to reach a deeper understanding of a concept. An example of this approach is to supplement lessons on the topic of direction with “Codepillar”, a coding app that engages students to move a caterpillar through various obstacles.

In my recent experience with 16 months of virtual learning, the evaluation aspect of this process was removed and replaced with a need to provide learning content while students learnt from home. Using the Seesaw and Zoom platforms, technologies were a necessary part of all learning for my students to deliver content and engage with each other in real time. As we approach a new school year preparing for some kind of “in person” learning to take place, this evaluation “muscle” will need to be used again and developed with a critical eye so that uses of classroom technologies are purposeful.