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| Goodbye Flashcards! |
The Bethel School District plan for the integration of technology can be found at the following link, but I found this statement at the website informative: "It is important to realize that technology as a particular skill is not the goal, but that the use of technology as a tool supporting learning is." http://act.bethelsd.org/
Supporting learning would be a great descriptor for what I saw in the classroom! My take-away was that good teaching is still good teaching--with or without technology, but technology can make the good teaching even more effective! Here are a few examples from the day.
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| Multiplication Chart |
The school district is working toward placing an iPad in every student's hands. This has been done in the three third grade classrooms. During my two days in the class students seldom were without an iPad or book in their hands. They practiced math fact fluency (above), filled in a Multiplication chart (right), create a character map after listening to a story, and downloaded a template for using the distributive property to solve a problem (Below). The use of one Ap accomplished almost everything! (ShowMe Interactive White Board)
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| Character Map |
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| Problem Solving Template |
Monitoring and Turning in Work
Probably, my favorite technology moment was when the students were taught to take a screen shot of their work and AirDrop it to the the teacher. The class across the hall has additional technology that allows the teacher to see what each student if doing on their iPad, but this was a great alternative.
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| Take a Picture! |
Students using their Heads and iPads
One part of the day that I found fascinating was the ways that students figured out to use the technology to help THEM be more efficient. Why go to your seat and copy something from the board when you can simply take a picture of it, download it into ShowMe and add to it by either typing or writing? Genius. My favorite moment was when a student took a picture of her 7's skip counting and realized it would help her on a math problem--so she pulled up the picture. The students around her said she was cheating. I asked, "Do you think you are cheating?" "No!" she said emphatically. "I did all the work myself, I am not copying it from anywhere so I am not cheating. It is all my own work." Yes! Technology is intended to support learning and she figured it out.
Dr. McConnaughey,
ReplyDeleteI liked reading this blog post especially about going paperless. I think there can be some huge environmental pros to this but I think that maybe there could be some educational cons. It was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing!
Melynda
I think having an iPad for each student is really useful and that students will be able to adapt to using them very easily with how engrossed they are with technology. It makes me kind of uncomfortable because I automatically hunk about how much that would cost, but when I think about if they got rid of using paper in the process, they might actually save money in the long run. It's still new and different and change is scary.
ReplyDeleteAlso, textbooks can be accessed on the iPads more economically. It is a commitment for schools financially, but a necessary commitment.
DeleteI see this as taking a screen shot. From time-to-time I take a picture of my schedule, so that I can do the right thing at the right time, especially when we have to make a change in the schedule. Students do figure out how to make good use of the technology. I only hope that they will not find writing as a chore. It can be difficult to type on a tablet without a portable keyboard.
DeleteThe great thing about monitoring and turning in work, is that the student has a copy of what they gave the teacher and so far it cannot be tampered with. The student cannot say they submitted something and they did not. Also, there is a time stamp. There is no argument about if the student made the deadline either.
DeleteI did think about how tablets are going to change writing--will they find it a chore? I am a believer in both manuscript and cursive, but while watching the students, I could see that this generation is going to have to find reasons to keep those skills. When they took a picture because they didn't want to go copy what was on the board, I smiled because I remembered so many things that I used to do in long laborious ways that I wouldn't think of doing that way any more!
DeleteI love that point about technology making "good teaching even more effective." (That's one of the points I was getting at in my Time with God post this week.) Sometimes, I think that teachers can lose sight of that and start to view tech, itself, as the end goal.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your daughter found that balance...yay for making students' and teachers' lives easier! :) I loved all the ways to use the ShowMe Interactive White Board...I'll have to look that up!
I should have put the link to the ShowMe Ap!
Deletehttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/showme-interactive-whiteboard/id445066279?mt=8
I had trouble finding the app at first, so the link is helpful. Thanks! :)
DeleteI like the idea of the AirDrop app. It encourages students to show more of their work as well as improves their penmanship, I am sure! It would be great to see into the minds of students (metaphorically), also.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about seeing into their minds, made me think of the apps that captures the steps taken by the students as they solve problems. The teacher across the hall uses this and I hope to be able to see it in action when I go back to WA next week.
DeleteI certainly could see going paperless as long as they have the interactive whiteboards. Children waste so much paper and I am a paper freak myself. But more of the pack rat kind. I love to have something in my hand and I enjoy writing down information that I am learning or that is being presented to me. When I realized I could highlight in ereaders I actually got a little excited. I am sure that environmentalists would love to see us go paperless. But there is always student data and privacy lurking in the background. My good friend Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of www.classsizematters.com has a fit over this. I will be attending the Network for Parent Education conference in March/April where she will be presenting on this. We have a full immersed technology elementary school in Guilford County which use iPads for all their work. I have not had the opportunity to see it but they seem to get results. My only issue is that after they learn how to use this technology, the districts need to continue this effort in the upper grades where we lose our children the most. Since schools print so much information, children are no longer writing down or copying from a white board it has done their handwriting an injustice. My own children are affected and it does not help when their father has a terrible handwriting because he does not have a need to write in his profession. Everything is in e-mail. Can you imagine paper being phased out. We might become allergic.
ReplyDeleteAh, student data and privacy. It is always a concern. In the classroom, when the students were doing formative work, it was on the computer, but when an assessment was taken, the paper came out. Of course much of the standardized testing is now going digital. It is a challenge.
DeleteJanyne,
ReplyDeleteI know our assignment for today is to comment on your blog but I already commented on this post last week. Will there be a new post for this week?