Harness the digital

During one of our CoL PLG's we were asked about how we were going to harness the digital. Basically how am I going to harness the affordances of technologies to do the following things:

• Transform the way we learn
  
• Offer new experiences
• Offer new opportunities 

I have been reflecting and thinking about this lately and have come back to this question as I have been looking at my data and my next steps especially around implementation. Technology has transformed the way the students have access to vocabulary and the understanding on the meaning of these words. I have tried to utilise this in a lot of my spelling activities by exposing the students to dictionary tools and how they can find the meaning of a word they are unsure of at anytime using this tool. I think this is such a powerful thing that the students have access to as they can use it at any time in their reading with any word that they might be stuck on. 

This made me reflect on what we needed to do when we were at school to find the meaning of a word we would have to get the dictionary and this would take 5 to 10 minutes and you would have lost track of what you were even reading. I am going to try and use this digital tool as much as possible because I think it is really useful and it is something that I use when I am reading as well when I am unsure of a word or phrase. 

This is a very small way of harnessing the digital in my inquiry and I am sure there are other things that I will come across along the way. One really great thing about harnessing the digital is the access we have lots of research and readings digitally which has helped shape my inquiry and given me access to a range of different strategies and research that I otherwise wouldn't have access to.