EPISODE 3- What are some of the Challenges and how do we Overcome?

The speaker, Sydney, is an education major taking an art integration course. They discuss the process of integrating art and core concepts, as well as the benefits of technology integration in the classroom. The challenges of incorporating these concepts include teacher preparation, the need for backup plans for technology failures, and student engagement. Sydney suggests using resources like Teacher Pay Teacher and providing students with a variety of options to demonstrate their learning. The podcast credits Sydney and Nagour for their collaboration. Hi, my name is Sydney. I am an education major, and I'm currently in EDN 414, which is an art integration course, and I'm partnered with Nagour, who is also an education major, who is in EDN 303, which is a technology integration course. So the very first episode, we talked about what is our integration, and what is technology integration. So art integration is the process of intertwining art and core concepts together, and having students display their understanding through art. So what is technology integration? Technology is brought into the classroom, and it aids within the organization and the educational process going on in the classroom. And so last episode, we talked about the benefits. We talked about how it makes the classroom fun, it makes the classroom engaging, it exposes students to so many different resources, and it also allows the students to critically think, engage different senses, and apply personal choice, and develop meaning from art and technology. And so today, I want to talk about the challenges of incorporating these two concepts, and how we can overcome these challenges. So the first challenge I want to look at is teacher preparation and setting aside time to prep. So when I was first enrolled within this art integration course, I was so intimidated. I can barely draw a stick figure, I don't know art standards, I don't know how to draw, how am I going to teach kids how to draw? But art integration is not just teaching kids how to draw, it's showing students how to portray their learning in a different way. So when you are planning these lessons, and you're integrating art within the classroom, we need to shift our mindsets. We need to ask ourselves, what is a realistic way that students can demonstrate their understanding in a different way? So for example, students can dance when you read a piece of literature. They can move their bodies to how they envision the literature going down. They can conduct a song about a book you're reading within class. They can make a song on the rules and operations in math. They can make a play on the history lessons. I just tutored this past semester and one thing that my 2T loved was reader's theater, where we read a story and we acted it out. This means we have to utilize our teacher prep time and utilize every teacher resource available to us. So one teacher resource that I absolutely love is Teacher Pay Teacher and here, this is not sponsored, here there are so many different resources available to help teachers, to give them guidelines on stuff they can do, activities they can do within their classroom. And they have so many great art integrative, technology integrative resources available. So the next challenge is geared directly towards a technology incorporated classroom. So newsflash, the internet does not always work. The Wi-Fi is going to be down. You're going to spill your coffee on your computer and it's not going to work. And so when you make a technological incorporated lesson or you incorporate it in a classroom in any way, you need to have a backup plan. It is not enough to have a Google Slides presentation and watch a video in your classroom. You always need to have a backup when you are dealing with technology because realistically, it is not going to work every day and you're going to need a backup plan. So the last challenge I wanted to discuss is what if my students don't like what we're doing and they simply don't want to participate. So this is the beauty of incorporating art and incorporating technology within the classroom is that it's such a wide variety of stuff that you can provide options. They don't have to sing, they don't have to dance, they don't have to do a play. They're able to go online and develop their own books. They can create a video game. Video games can hold art in them. There's such a wide variety and it's all at your fingertips. If we provide so many options to the students, you can have the students pick. Okay, you can pick how you want to demonstrate your learning. Art integration and technology integration is going to be as easy or as hard as you make it. So I think it's super important as we are prepping, as we are shifting our mindset and overcoming these challenges, it's important to think of realistic ways that we can incorporate these in the classroom. The credits in this podcast go to Sydney and Nagour as they both equally bounce ideas off of their heads. Sydney recorded this audio and Nagour as edited it.