Narrative

To fully understand the problem I am facing and there in the project I have created some background is needed on myself, my family, and my relationship with technology. The members of my family that are important to know about are my mother, my father, my sister, and my fiance. My parents are only 6 months apart. My sister and I are only 17 months apart and my fiance and I are only 6 months apart. Even though there is this closeness in ages, we all view technology in such different ways. And this view can be seen in how each of us functions in everyday life.

My mother has a very good relationship with technology. I remember at a very early age my mother bringing home this giant computer and stationing it right in the living room. My sister and I would get about 30 minutes of computer time a day which was usually spent looking at pictures of animals and maybe playing solitaire. Most of the time my mom would spend hours at a time on this computer. She would blog, play games, surf the web, and to this day she is writing websites where she would create a character and interact with people all over the world to create stories. From the very moment technology started to pick up and become more popular my mother fully embraced it and is still amazing at navigating technology to this day.

My father is a different story. My father is not a technology guy. He would be identified as a techno-traditionalist. He still types on his phone with one finger. He held onto his flip phone until it died and it was next to impossible to get a flip phone from the phone store and that was when he reluctantly got his first smartphone. He got the IPhone SE because it was “the cheaper one and does more than I even need it to”. All my father can do at this point is send a text, make a call and scroll on Tik Tok, which is his favorite form of simple entertainment. My father even refused to embrace the technology at his job. Later in his career my father became an ID lieutenant which involved a lot of paperwork. But even when the online system came out to make this job easier, my father preferred the pen and paper until he was forced by his boss to move to the online system.

Then there is my sister. My sister, in my eyes at least, is a tech genius. She has always been a really great problem solver and technology was no different for her. She helped me throughout all of my life with technology. Even when it was my time in front of the computer as a kid she was right there with me so she could help when I inevitably needed her. My sister works in the medical field helping patients in recovery. And her skills with technology are so great that she got promoted in her job for assisting her site in using a new digital platform to help their patients.

Next up is my fiance. He is my savior when it comes to technology. He is the whole reason I made it out alive from Zoom school. He doesn't have a lot of patience when it comes to technology. He is most definitely a TECHNO. He is also a teacher and is always finding new ways to add technology into the classroom to make his life easier and his students' lives more exciting. He is the person you go to when you have a major tech problem. He was that student that was helping his teachers even as early as elementary school, with their smartboard or technology. When I think of the word and the idea behind digital native, I think of him. Somehow he just gets technology and it's truly amazing to see.

And then there is me. My relationship with technology is not great to say the least. Although I would be considered a digital native, that couldn't feel further from the truth. My very first phone was the LG slide phone. It had a full keyboard and even an emoji button. With that being said all I could do on this phone was send a text, pick the best emoji for said text, and make a call. Around the same time I got this phone; going into 6th grade, social media was also starting to pick up. The first form of social media I remember having was Facebook. I remember sitting with my mother and my sister and comparing my profile to theirs. They had made these beautiful profiles and they moved through the platform with such ease and all I could do was post a status and scroll. But at least I was better than my father who refused to even get social media.

My aversion to technology followed me all throughout school. In high school I avoided it as much as I could, which wasn’t too hard at the time. Once I got to college I could no longer avoid it. There were many times where I would have to ask for help even just to use the blackboard and access my classes. This feeling of frustration and defeat followed me around all through college whenever I needed help with technology. Then the worst thing that could have happened, happened. Covid hit and all of a sudden my whole life was online. The last year and a half of my college career was spent at Zoom University and that feeling of helplessness and defeat was right there with me the whole time. But even through this experience I never really learned how to help myself. When I would ask for help, instead of helping me through the problem and helping me troubleshoot, my phone or computer would just be taken and this task would be done for me. This also followed me into my first year teaching. I was constantly feeling hopeless because I could not help myself nevermind my 7 year old students. I was also leaning on my co teacher for help and that did not feel good. So here's the problem that I faced. 

Picture this, you have been teaching for two hours. You still have 6 hours in front of you. There has just been a big transition; students from all three first grade classes just mixed between the classes based on their reading level. You finally get everyone settled in and you and our co-teacher pull your small groups. You have about 7 students in front of you, your co-teacher has the same. Then, all of a sudden, 3 hands pop up of students who can't figure out why their computers aren't working. One student needed help with their Clever Badge and the other two just needed their computers restarted. You sit back down to start reading with your kids and four more hands go up. And this continues to happen through the hour and a half guided reading block. This is a daily occurrence in the first grade. To give some context, I just finished my first year after taking a non traditional teaching path. I also have a sensory processing disorder that can make me over-stimulated very easily. And to put the cherry on top, I am horrible with technology. I would have to call in my co teacher to help. Unfortunately, her technology skills were only slightly better than my own. So often we would have to send kids out of class and to the front of the school to see Ms. Bell who would be able to help them. This led to frustration in myself and time lost learning for the student. It was this exact issue that brought me to my final project. For the project itself I decided to make a visual anchor that would be stationed in the front and the back of the classroom.

I believe that students learn from each other, I believe that students, even at 7, can be independent problem solvers. And I believe that students are capable of more than they think they are. With these beliefs it is my hope that this checklist I have created will help students to become independent problem solvers and learn how to help those around them without taking over the task. So going into my second year of teaching my plan is to use the checklist and teach students how to succeed in troubleshooting independently. The skills I hope to teach my students will follow them throughout their lives.