Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Let's See How Far We've Come

When I started this position in the 2013-2014 school year, we each had a laptop in our classrooms and each building had a cart of around a dozen or so iPads to share. That was a daunting year -- apps were being requested and added in a flurry. Principals were breaking their budgets paying for apps. Teachers were having to get creative with ways to schedule the iPads for their classes, and then even more creative how to use the iPads with their kids. I also came around that year and hung up blue papers in different places in all of the buildings that look like the one in this article.

Yes, I was already trying to encourage you to work on finding ways to integrate technology instead of just use it -- with a few iPads you only could get your hands on occasionally! Call me a dreamer :-)

But here we are, five years later, and look how far we've come! Back in 2013-2014, we were all starry-eyed dreamers fantasizing about teaching in a school district that was one-to-one, imagining all the amazing ways we could transform the learning experiences happening in our classrooms. And now that dream is a reality!

But it is worth doing a reality self-check on where we are individually with technology integration versus simply using technology.

How purposeful is tech use in your classroom?
Who uses technology more in your class -- you or your students?
Is technology used by the students to produce things or to learn things?
Is technology used for higher-order thinking tasks or lower-order thinking tasks (here's an idea how to check this -- can the kids Google the answers to the things they need to learn? If so, that's lower order.)?
Do kids use the available technology alone or for collaboration more?

These are just some questions to ponder, based on the concepts shared on the chart referenced in the above link.

(And just for fun, here's the music video for the song that inspired the title of my post this week.)


So, how far have you come? I challenge you to be open and honest. Technology integration doesn't happen overnight, and this is our first year being one-to-one, after all, so no one is expected to be an expert in technology integration!

Care to share? I'd love to have your comments on this post. Where are you at? What are your goals? What strides have you made? Please share -- and as an added incentive, I will hold a raffle for some fun goodies for anyone who actually COMMENTS on the post (not responds via email -- actually COMMENTS below). I just got some cool Google stickers and some Google emoji stickers, too. So my plan is to have one person from each building win their choice of Google sticker or emoji sticker simply by leaving a comment that addresses the topic of this post.

5 comments:

  1. I feel like I add some new piece to my curriculum on a weekly basis. Hardest part is finding the time to make the changes instead of falling back on the easy/already completed lessons. It is fun to learn and try new things, but it is so hard to fit it all in. My goal for next year is to incorporate even more of my curriculum.

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    1. But it sounds like what you do is planned and purposeful, so that is one important thing to consider when integrating technology. Well done!

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  2. One of my goals this year was to find a creative way to incorporate technology into my classroom lessons! I have used google forms to survey students, and I used We Video regularly in the fall to help students enter a Google for Education competition. I love incorporating technology into my lessons because the students often appear more engaged and typically end up teaching me a new trick or two!

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    1. One of the signs of integration is when technology is used to facilitate activities that wouldn't be possible to do (or at least difficult) without that technology. Sounds like the Chromebooks and WeVideo made something a reality for the kids this year! Nice!

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