Reading through the different kinds of delivery methods I began to think about my own teaching and how using technology to enhance student understanding, engagement and learning is not different from using different teaching styles to help your students succeed.

As a PE teacher and someone who views them self as a novice/beginner in technology I tend to shy away from using technology in the class because I don’t fully understand how to do it or I fear that the students will be less attentive in class. Instead, I try to use many visuals, explain concepts in multiple ways, demonstrate skills and have them experience what we are talking about. I find that using a number of different methods helps get the concept across to my students. However, after reading through Bates’ information about delivery methods I find that even though I am providing different ways of understanding, I may be doing a disservice to students who learn better online and with technology.

Bates mentions that there is not one best way of teaching when it comes to face-to-face, completely online or a hybrid as each student learns differently. We have to know our learners so we can provide what is best for them. After reading this it made me think about how it is almost same idea as basic teaching. We use different methods to help engage all our students or we risk losing a large portion of the class. What really resonated with me was how Bates’ made the comment that “new technology rarely completely replaces an older technology” (Bates. 2015. p. 11) rather it improves the practice. I am now seeing that my face-to-face teaching using visuals, experience, demonstrations and more was an “old technology”. Now we have even more methods that we draw on to help engage our students. Some students excel with online methods and I should not be fearsome about this as it will help them. Some students might not excel with online or hybrid situations and that’s ok, as I can use my original methods to help. I am starting to really understand that using online methods is not a completely new era of teaching, rather it adds a new feature to help people succeed. The old way of teaching is not gone as we can still use those methods, but we now we have a new method to add to our collection. I now have to push my resistance aside and be more open to these new styles and instead of viewing it as something new I can see it as an improvement. I need to try and work with technologies and adapt them into my curriculum as it will for more students to be engaged.

References:

Bates, A. W. (2015). A short history of educational technology. In Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. Vancouver, BC: Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/section-8-1-a-short-history-of-educational-technology/

Bates, A. W. (2015). Modes of delivery. In Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. Vancouver, BC: Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/chapter-10-modes-of-delivery/