The context of my school absolutely impacted the design of my lesson. I work in an urban school where most of my students come from low SES homes. This is the first year students have had 1:1 access, but it came in a year when ⅔ of them were at home everyday and are not getting the technology help they need. In this sense, students have to learn how to use their computer while keeping up with their assignments. I have to plan time into my units to work with students on the software we are using before I even begin the lesson. In this case it was ClassKick. In my design, students do not have to work outside of school. This is because I know my students are not held accountable after school for completing work and when I have assigned homework they fall further behind. I have adapted my lessons to slowly introduce new technologies while also trying to balance my blended learning students. The expectations from my district are that students are using their technology and present in class everyday, however there is a gap between their expectations and where the students are because they were rushed into this school year with no training. Despite having access, I had some students not logging into ClassKick for the entire week only to find out they didn’t know how to log in but were not advocating for themselves or joining the Zoom to ask me how. They are still in a transition period and we are all working to keep our expectations of them high so they are motivated while still being able to manage all of the new things in their school day.
In another school, I might have been able to work higher up through the SAMR model because the students could have already been comfortable with the technology and training. There might be more resources, more accountability at home, and more intrinsic motivation to succeed, which completely changes how I could teach. The context of my school affects every instructional decision that I make.