- Kahoot - We actually showed teachers this at our training in August before school started. They loved it and many have been using it ever since.
- ExitTicket - The math teachers really love this tool. It is great for formative assessment and offers pre-assessment, practice assessment (after direct instruction), and exit-assessment.
- PowToons - I co-taught this in a social studies classroom. The students loved it so much, they started doing PowToons for their presentations in other classes.
- Google Docs - Not just Docs, but Google Forms, Google Draw, and Google Presentations. We made a conscious effort to focus on the core tools during the month of September
- HaikuLearning - HaikuLearning is our LMS (Learning Management System). We pushed some of the lesser known/utilized features such as the Dropbox, WikiProjects, DiscussionBoards, and assessments.
I am sure that there were a few more that we discussed, but these were the most popular. While this was our focus for the second month of our 1:1 initiative, that is not why I am writing this post.
In the discussions with the teachers that occurred after just 2 months of having Chromebooks, I was surprised by the characteristics that students had started to show. Some of these are eye-opening, and others may make you bust out laughing.
- Students relying too much on technology - Google has inadvertently made the world become lazy. Students had become so used to "not" saving in Google Docs, that when they worked in other apps and/or websites, they failed to hit the Save button. (Insert Homer Simpson, "DOH!")
- When technology is working, it is our best friend, and when it doesn't work, well...Technology should take away the excuse, "the dog ate my homework", but students still found ways to not do their work, they just put a tech spin on it. Teachers told me that students would come with their work not completed because of numerous technology excuses: "I couldn't get on my home wifi", "I couldn't find the Google Doc", "My Chromebook wouldn't charge", etc. Students had forgotten that paper and pencil still existed and they could still complete the assignments the "old-fashioned"/20th Century way. NOTE: If you are reading this, make sure you have a conversation with your students about this early on and let them know that you will not accept this excuse. This is a great endorsement for why students need critical thinking and problem solving skills.
- Teachers can be just as much to blame - During our first 2 months, we experienced a week long outage of our internet at school due to an issue with our filtering appliance. You would have thought that the world had just ended. To be honest, I felt bad for the teachers and students who were now used to teaching and learning with devices. However, these outages can and will occur, and we must continue to teach through them. I encouraged teachers to put the devices aside rather than get frustrated at attempting to use them, and to focus on the curriculum instead. After the outage, the district made a decision to block student access to YouTube. "MUTINY!", could almost be heard on teacher's lips, "YouTube contains great, free content!"..."So, keep using it" was my reply. Huh? Teachers could still access YouTube and show clips in class, and they could still continue to embed videos into their LMS class pages. Student's would not be able to view the videos from their school devices, but they would still be able to access them from their mobile phones, tablets, and home computers. If you have a resource that will either enhance a student's learning and/or provide additional support for the student, why not share it. Just because it isn't accessible from the device you provide for them, doesn't mean it isn't worth having. This is like saying, you can't read Moby Dick, because it isn't in our school library. There are other libraries out there for students to access. NOTE: Please communicate this with students and parents and only put these "restricted" resources on as supports (if needed), not as required viewing, or show during class.
- Which came first, the internet or books - In a truly eye-opening discussion, a teacher shared how she had required students to use at least one book as a source for a research project they were working on. The students started to debate with the teacher why this was necessary. The students main argument for not using books, was that they felt, "books simply got their information from the internet." WHOA! What have we created? Now, it is easy for us to see their flawed thinking. Like someone is actually going to write down on paper what is already available digitally online. Yet, when you really think about it, that is the problem with education today. Are we teaching students what is already available for them online? What is a teacher's role in the 21st Century Classroom? This is why we must transform our teaching because, students are transforming the way they are learning and in the process, how they view the world.
These scenarios are not just happening at our school, I hear stories from other ed tech coaches in the elementary buildings about how students miss reading physical books, and writing and drawing on physical paper. We have to be careful as we take our students into the 21st Century, that we do not forget where we came from and lose the arts of (hand)writing, (physical book)reading, and (Crayola)graphic arts, lest we turn our students into monsters.