Shout out to Office 365
Today Sally Song presented to our EdTech class on the benefits and challenges of using technology in the classroom, specifically considering Office 365.
Sally pointed out the beauty of having an entire school and district on the same platform – the ease for students to submit assignments and work with peers without the barrier of actually needing to come together to work on a project. There are a lot of group projects that I am sure would have been able to go so much further if this technology was more widely used.
Now, I am sure that many people feel that there are already other online platforms for working and sharing together, and they are not wrong; however, the sharing and locating of information in one place under the Office 365 banner, means that there a simplicity that some other systems do not have.
Sally made an excellent point about being aware of how and why we use technology without our classrooms and with our students. We need to be intentional, the best technology in the world is useless if is not used in an intentional manner. I use to work in a school setting where we had a lot of technology to support our youngest of learners and while some people were a bit taken aback by all the technology used, once they could see that it was used with a purpose and to assist in specific ways, their concerns melted away. When there are powerful tools, that can support our learners we should utilize them to the best of our abilities because having more tools is so much better than not enough.