Module 7- Assistive Technologies and Digital Equity

Hello everyone, 

Welcome to my third blog post.  For this post, I will be discussing Digital Equity.  Digital equity means ensuring students have equal access to technology, as well as the training necessary to navigate and use digital tools.  This module has helped me understand how digital equity will impact my teaching in physical education in the following ways.  In todays educational society, students need the ability to be better 21st educational learners.  Teachers and students have become more reliant on computers and the internet to complete assignments.  Students have various levels of access to technology.  Some students have a lot of access to home internet and then there are some students that have homes without access to the internet.  These students that do not have home internet rely on access to schools, libraries, or local businesses to do their school assignments.  These students that do not have all the access like other students may, face challenges completing school work and activities.  Fortunately, digital equity is evolving so that students are able to overcome these challenges.  Digital equity can be so much more than technology, especially in physical education.  Since physical education is my future profession as an educator, I will be discussing ways I can promote equity in my classroom. 

This module has given me the knowledge to help me overcome and help these students that may have these technology issues they may prevent them from learning physical education assignments at home.  One way that I can use digital equity in my classroom is by decorating with a purpose.  What I mean by this is, as a physical education teacher, your classroom is basically the whole gymnasium.  If you are lucky enough, you may have a classroom too.  I have learned that you can decorate with a purpose in your classroom so that students can learn.  Students may not have access to the internet at home, but at school in my classroom I can use posters and reference materials to show different races performing different sports and activities.  I can also use decorations to show sports or activities that are played in different cultures.  This is very important in my opinion because usually someone learns about a different sport or activity from the internet.  With decorations, I can ensure that students are able to see these every day so that they are aware of them.  Another way I can use digital equity in my classroom is by using diverse grouping.  In physical education, grouping or using teams is used a lot when doing sports, activities, or games.  This is a great way for students to learn from one another.  I can use this by not making each team the same gender, placing students that are different races on teams, and placing students from different cultures on teams.  This just helps students get to know one another a lot better and learn from one another.  

The process for making my future classroom have digital equity will be how I plan, implement, and reflect.  Planning will be like what does digital equity look like for my classroom?  This means what digital equity will look like and what ideas do I see my classroom using in the future.  Some of the ideas are above.  Another planning I could ask myself would be how can the number of quality devices (access to internet) affect my physical education program and lesson plans.  This means, knowing what students have access and what students do not.  This is good to know because the students that do not have access means that you can find ways to help them still achieve.  Implementation means, how can I create and use all my ideas that I come up with for my classroom.  Implementation will also go with how can I help coach my students and their parents on the technologies they will be using.  This is just so that each and every parent and student have a good idea of what each student will be using in the class so that they know how to use it.  The last one is reflection.  This is a very important one because this will be how you can look back on your teaching and lesson plans to see how effective they were.  Reflection also helps with teacher development.  This is how you become a better teacher and how you make a better impact on your students.  

This model was a very good learning experience for me.  It was very helpful to me to be able to see all the different kinds of ways that I can implement digital equity into my future physical education classroom.  I recommend any teacher to make sure they understand what digital equity is and look into implying it in their classrooms.